I mainly queued up Lady in Cement because it sounded like a Travis McGee story. It wasn't, of course. Travis McGee is the iconic tough guy Fort Lauderdale "salvage specialist" from the color-titled novels of John D. MacDonald. Lady features a late 60s Frank Sinatra as Tony Rome, Lauderdale detective.
The movie starts with scuba-diving Frank finding a naked lady with her feet in cement on the ocean floor. I did a little research and found Darker Than Amber, where McGee rescues a woman thrown off a bridge with a cinder block wired to her legs. That and the Florida location is about all the connection between the two.
I'll skip most of the plot and just report that Frank is joined by Dan Blocker as a Really Big Guy and Raquel Welch as a totally hot babe. Both truly succeed in their roles. The movie takes place in a late hipster milieu, with strip clubs, go-go dancers and those wacky kids with the long hair. Sinatra is a long way from the skinny kid in On the Town. He's kind of a squat, tanned toad - more cranky old guy than king of cool.
Still, this kind of movie runs on rails, it does what it sets out to do and it's a fun ride if you like this kind of thing. I admit that I fell asleep before it was over, but that's no criticism - I was tired, it was late, and I probably got as much out of it as if I'd stayed awake. This is the second movie in the series - I'll probably watch the first, Tony Rome.
In conclusion, it looks like Darker than Amber was made into a movie with Rod Taylor as McGee. But it isn't available in Netflix.
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I think the first Tony Rome movie had Jill Saint John in it. Whatta broad. I think Frank's character might have lived on a boat in that one, an idea he obviously traveled into the future for to steal from Don Johnson.
Google the Esquire Magazine Gay Talese article "Sinatra Has a Cold" from 1966 or thereabouts. I think Talese was supposed to interview Frank but he could never talk to him (Frank had a cold and was in a lousy mood), so this is what he came up with. It's genius, a great, great read. You'll need a double of scotch afterward.
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