This Columbia DVD release of Pal Joey shows that while this is far from star Frank Sinatra's best picture, it may just contain his most iconic film role. This Technicolor backstage musical features Sinatra as a low-class womanizer with a sentimental heart of gold who is able to sing all the emotions he can't express through speech. While the film of Pal Joey butchered both John O'Hara's bitingly cynical novella and his Broadway musical, the movie features beautiful San Francisco locations and plenty of great Rodgers and Hart songs. If the movie doesn't measure up to its origins, on its own terms it still remains a vastly entertaining, star-studded Hollywood musical and its soundtrack (scored and orchestrated by Sinatra's chief arranger Nelson Riddle) is among the finest of the 1950s. The DVD does an excellent job of highlighting the jazzy musical numbers into separate chapters, and though the widescreen anamorphic print may show some minor touches of wear and tear, overall the transfer is beautiful. The perfectly balanced Dolby Digital 2.0 is in the original mono and it sounds great when fed through a stereo system. On a side note: Sinatra was the number-one box-office star during the mid-'50s, but he graciously gave top billing to Rita Hayworth (over the studio's objections) since this movie marked the end of the troubled star's illustrious career with Columbia Pictures.