“So wise, so warm, so real”
“So wise, so warm, so real”
Nancy’s connection to Bobby Darin was personal and professional. A close friend of Bobby’s for many years, Nancy graciously allowed him to shoot his self-produced movie, The Vendors, in her house in 1970. Nancy recalls,
“I pretty much moved out for the time they were shooting
because there were so many cables and lights and the like that I couldn’t get to the kitchen!”
In this clip from an interview posted on his website,
Bobby describes the plot of The Vendors.
“It’s a kind of a love story against a sordid background.
It’s about an over-the-hill hooker…and a young junkie folk singer.”
Written, directed and musically scored by Bobby, the film, which stars Mariette Hartley, Gary Wood, Richard Bakalyan and Dick Lord, has never been released. However, the September 12, 1970 issue of Billboard reported that The Vendors had been “screened the day before he opened his [then-] current engagement at the Landmark Hotel [in Las Vegas].”
Three years later, Nancy would appear on the February 9, 1973 episode of his second NBC-TV series, The Bobby Darin Show, and collaborate with him on a cover of The Doors’ “Light My Fire.” Nancy remembers the duet with amusing understatement:
“ 
Bobby Darin and I did a duet of Light My Fire on his tv show. It was pretty good.”
Nancy had previously interpreted the song for the Nancy [Twelve Ways] LP and her brother’s Frank Sinatra Jr. With Family And Friends television special, both in 1969.
Nancy and Bobby also shared an appreciation of Leslie Bricusse’s score for the 1967 motion picture Doctor Dolittle. From that score, each recorded “When I Look In Your Eyes”: Bobby’s rendition on his Bobby Darin Sings Doctor Dolittle LP; Nancy’s version on her Sheet Music CD.
In the liner notes for Bobby’s record, Arthur P. Jacobs, the film’s producer, recounted Bobby’s interest in the score:
“When Bobby came to us and said he wanted to do his musical impression of Doctor Dolittle, we were flattered but felt that the musical content of our production was out of Bobby’s usual style. I mean, in one scene Rex [Harrison] sings When I Look In Your Eyes to a seal. How would that sit with a chap who whirred and whirled with Mack The Knife? Bobby’s reply: ‘Lead me to it’.”
Leslie Bricusse had collaborated on another movie song recorded by Nancy: her James Bond theme, “You Only Live Twice.”
“John Barry is a genius with movie scores and Leslie Bricusse wrote a perfect lyric.”
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![“Singer Nancy Sinatra called on Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey at the Capitol [...] and the Veep presented her with a bracelet bearing the vice presidential seal. Nancy, who is a supporter of Humphrey, gave him a string of Indian love beads.”](http://snc-cdn4.appspot.com/blog/2013/05/The-Dispatch-Lexington-NC-May-21-1968-page-20-HHH-VP-bracelet.jpg){kind=link}
![“screened the day before he opened his [then-] current engagement at the Landmark Hotel [in Las Vegas].”](http://nancysinatra.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Billboard-Article-September-12-1970-The-Vendors-Las-Vegas-Screening.jpg){kind=link}
![Nancy [Twelve Ways]](http://nancysinatra.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Nancy-Twelve-12-Ways-Reprise-6333.jpeg){kind=link}
