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The Detective

Catalog Number
1018
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The Detective (1968)

Additional Information

Additional Information
You're Joe Leland, detective. And you sit behind this desk in a city crawling with every crime in the book. And then along comes one as dirty as knee brought right up to your stomach.

Roderick Thorp's giant novel comes on like a powerhouse!

An adult look at a police detective.


Frank Sinatra gives a gritty performance in the crime thriller The Detective. When Teddy Leikman, the homosexual son of a politically connected department-store magnate, is murdered, detective Joe Leland (Frank Sinatra) is sent in to investigate. Leland drags in Teddy's psychotic former roommate Felix Tesla (Tony Musante) and forces a confession out of him; for his work on the case Leland gets a promotion, which troubles him. Afterwards, Norma MacIver (Jacqueline Bisset), the widow of a well-heeled accountant, comes to see Leland. Her husband was killed after falling off the grandstand at a racetrack -- but Norma thinks he was pushed. She asks Leland to investigate her husband's death. Reopening the case, Leland discovers that the police are opposed to him scratching around any further, and after an attempt on his life, he uncovers some startling evidence that may connect the two deaths.


The Detective is a 1968 film directed by Gordon Douglas, produced by Aaron Rosenberg and starring Frank Sinatra, based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Roderick Thorp.
Co-stars include Lee Remick, Jacqueline Bisset, Jack Klugman and Robert Duvall.
The Detective marked a move towards — and was billed as — a more "adult" approach to depicting the life and work of a police detective while confronting, for one of the first times in mainstream cinema, hitherto taboo subjects such as homosexuality. Here, the detective in question is Joe Leland, who is trying to juggle marital issues with a murder case that seemed to be open-and-shut at first, but runs much deeper than he could have imagined.
The Detective was Sinatra's fourth collaboration with director Douglas, having worked together on Tony Rome (1967), Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) and some years prior on Young at Heart (1954). Their final film together would be a sequel to Tony Rome, 1968's Lady in Cement.


Released on May 28, 1968 The Detective was a box office success, becoming the 20th highest earning film of the year with $6.5 million taken in box office rentals. Critical reception was mostly good while Sinatra delivered one of his most intense and dedicated acting performances.
The Hollywood Reporter would comment: "Sinatra has honed his laconic, hep veneer to the point of maximum credibility." Roger Ebert praised his performance and the concept of the film, stating: "It is pretty clear that Sinatra wanted 'The Detective' to be as good a movie as he could manage. It provides a clear, unsentimental look at a police investigation, and even the language reflects the way cops (and the rest of us) talk."[4]
In 1979 Roderick Thorp wrote a sequel to The Detective called Nothing Lasts Forever, in which Leland is trapped in a Klaxon Oil Corporation skyscraper after it is taken by German terrorists and must rescue his daughter and grandchildren. The novel was adapted into the 1988 20th Century Fox film Die Hard, in which Joe Leland's name was changed to John McClane, the object of his heroism was changed from his daughter to his wife, and Klaxon became the Nakatomi Corporation; that film launched a film franchise that continues into the 2010s.
The Detective was released on DVD by 20th Century Fox in 2005 as part of a boxed set that included Tony Rome and Lady in Cement.


Release Date: May 27, 1968


Distrib: 20th Century Fox

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