PODCAST · music
SUDDENLY: a Frank Sinatra podcast
by Rabia, Felix & Henry
SUDDENLY... exploring the 20th century from a trans, queer & radical Australian perspective through the legacy of Frank Sinatra. Catgirl noir, ring a ding ding, etc. Join us as we deep dive into Sinatra's work and the nuances of history in abstract & creative ways, with episodes structured around Sinatra's albums, songs, films and radio appearances. Hosted by Rabia & Felix in Melbourne, and Henry Giardina in Los Angeles. Check out our website: suddenlypod.gay. Contact: suddenlypod at gmail dot com. I dig you the most xx
Episodes
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66: The End
Thank you all for an amazing four years.
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SUDDENLY is coming to an end
Send us your thoughts & memories - [email protected]
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65: Pal Joey, Part 3 - Fight for What You Love
Alfred Hitchcock! bell hooks! The Ballad of Reading Gaol! The dramatic conclusion of our Pal Joey series finds Rabia, Felix and Henry bewitched, bothered and bewildered as they learn the end of Lorenz Hart's story and grapple with the very nature of love. In putting forth our dueling philosophies...
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64: Pal Joey, Part 2 - Art is Not Moral
For the second part of our Pal Joey deep dive, Henry leads Rabia and Felix through what made the original musical so groundbreaking and what makes the 1957 Sinatra film adaptation so bad. We also finally learn what "The Lady is a Tramp" is all about. Who's the mouse with the built? website:...
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BONUS: Brian Wilson's Dreams (with April Reid)
ENDLESS HARMONY ENDLESS SUMMER STILL I DREAM OF IT BRIAN WILSON FOREVER 🎶🌊✨
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63: Pal Joey, Part 1 - The Beauty of Lorenz Hart
For part one of our Pal Joey deep dive, we look at the life of gay lyricist Lorenz Hart. We explore Hart's writings, philosophy, and history as a closeted artist living a painfully contradictory double life. We also discuss the benefits of irredeemable characters in art, setting the stage for a...
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BONUS: Beautiful or Tragic - The Untold Saga of 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert'
An emotional deep dive into the untold history of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a terrible, racist and transphobic film. Rabia looks at the lives of the three drag queens and one trans woman that it was based on (Cindy Pastel, Strykermeyer, Lady Bump and Carlotta) and the...
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62: I've Got You Under My Skin, Part 3 - Reality
The third and final part of our series about "I've Got You Under My Skin" and the AIDS crisis, in which we watch the Red Hot + Blue TV special from 1990 featuring the Neneh Cherry version of the song. We look at AIDS messaging of the time, learning from its bravery and mistakes, and also confront...
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61: I've Got You Under My Skin, Part 2 - Angel
The second part of our series about "I've Got You Under My Skin" and the AIDS crisis, in which we watch the first two hours of a VHS tape recorded by Michael Aldrich from his Dope Tapes archive. email: suddenlypod at gmail dot com website: suddenlypod.gay donate: ko-fi.com/suddenlypod
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60: I've Got You Under My Skin, Part 1 - Mentality
The first in a trilogy of episodes about "I've Got You Under My Skin" and the AIDS crisis. contact: suddenlypod at gmail dot com website: suddenlypod.gay donate: ko-fi.com/suddenlypod
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59: Meet Me in Las Vegas (with Garrett Cash)
This week, special guest Garrett Cash attempts to set a world record for the most preparation ever undertaken to appear as a guest on a single episode of a podcast. Meet Me in Las Vegas is a boring MGM film from 1956 set at the Sands casino in which Sinatra appears in a cameo as "Man at Slot...
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58: Too Many Husbands!
It's a simple idea with a long history: Woman is told her husband has perished at sea, so she remarries, then the original husband turns up alive and hijinks ensue! An old-timey excuse to show a throuple and a natural premise for comedy, this concept stayed resonant for many years and was remade…
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Ramadan Radio: Rocky Fortune's Rocket Racket
We're off for Ramadan and will be back soon. In the meantime, here's a classic episode of Rocky Fortune with a quick intro about some upcoming episodes. website: suddenlypod.gay contact: suddenlypod at gmail dot com donate: ko-fi.com/suddenlypod
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BONUS: "The Elvis Conspiracy" 1992 Channel 7 Adelaide Commercials (with David M. Green)
Not just the 1992 "Is Elvis Alive?" conspiracy theory special The Elvis Conspiracy (a sequel to 1991's The Elvis Files). Not just the specific airing of that special from Channel 7 in Adelaide, South Australia on 26 May 1992. The commercials from that airing. It's as granular as we've ever been,...
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57: Finian's Rainbow
In 1947, a musical premiered in which a conservative US senator is transformed into a woman by a farming commune of "rainbow people" in order to teach him a lesson. Brimming with queer and trans subtext, Finian's Rainbow is a difficult and exhausting watch today but it remains fascinating as an...
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56: I Love My Wife
I love my wife. The "I Love My Wife" timeline: "I Love My Wife" (unrelated song from I Do, I Do, 1966) Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (1969) I Love My Wife (film, unrelated to the musical, 1970) Viens chez moi, j'habite chez une copine (French play, 1975) "I Love My Wife" (Sinatra single release...
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Henry Has Evacuated LA
As Los Angeles burns, Henry checks in with the show from a Motel 6 in Palm Springs. websites: henrygiardina.com suddenlypod.gay contact: suddenlypod at gmail dot com
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55: Songs for Swingin' Lovers!
We're back, ahead of schedule, with an emotional first episode of 2025 after a long and personally very traumatic few months. This week we turn to Sinatra's classic 1956 album Songs for Swingin' Lovers! and explore how the album title inadvertently became a double entendre in the 1960s. Placing...
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Season 4 Starts Soon
Merry Christmas. I'm back. See you soon. - Rabia suddenlypod.gay suddenlypod at gmail dot com
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SUDDENLY will return in 2025
Hi, Rabia here. I have Long COVID and am struggling. I need time to process things and figure out how to best use my energy. Podcasting is good for me but very energy consuming, and I need to work out how I'm going to manage this condition. So Season 3 will end here for now and we will pick back…
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54: The Man with the Golden Arm (with Spike Vincent)
Melbourne's Medically Supervised Injecting Room (MSIR) in North Richmond opened in 2018. This was the result of a years-long grassroots campaign led by the local community, fed up with constant overdoses in the streets. The MSIR operates on principles of harm reduction which simply work and...
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53: Wake Up and Live, Part 5 - Giardina on Winchell
In the final (?) part of our Wake Up and Live saga, Henry returns to the show to share his thoughts on Walter Winchell's legacy through the lens of the gossip landscape of 2024. Sources for this episode: * John Mosedale - The Men Who Invented Broadway (1981) * Neal Gabler - Winchell: Gossip…
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BONUS: The "Is Elvis Alive?" Conspiracy Theory + "The Elvis Files" (1991) (with Justin Gausman)
For the last few months, Justin and Rabia have been co-hosting TCBCast After Dark, a deep dive into the seamy underbelly of the Elvis conspiracy world available only on the TCBCast Patreon feed. As they approached Part 6 of an exhaustive investigation into the truth behind the grifters who...
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52: Wake Up and Live, Part 4 - The Secret
This week, we continue to act as if it were impossible to fail in part four of our exhaustive deep dive into Wake Up and Live. Picking up the story from the end of World War II, we look at the legacy of Dorothea Brande's book and the essentially identical self-help scam that generations of…
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51: Wake Up and Live, Part 3 - Dancing in the Dark
The history books forgot about the 1944 radio adaptation of Wake Up and Live, a bizarre and disastrous production in which a fascist self-help book adapted into a comedy movie about duelling radio shows is adapted back into a radio show in which several other radio shows exist within the world of...
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50: Wake Up and Live, Part 2 - Machine Men
Please note that the accompanying graphic for this episode has not been chosen lightly and is intended in the spirit of historical education, criticism and artistic commentary. In part 2 of our investigation into the saga of Wake Up and Live, we look at the original 1936 self-help book by…
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49: Wake Up and Live, Part 1 - Mic Fright
This week we begin a three-part investigation into Wake Up and Live. What is it? Good question. It's a 1930s self-help book, a musical in which a real-life journalist/radio host plays himself, and later, a radio drama adapted from the film. All these things interrelate in a way that's confusing…
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48: Post Time
***SPOILERS AHEAD - LISTEN TO EPISODE 47 FIRST*** It is now post time. Selected resources and links mentioned this week: * Follow @covidconsciousqueersnaarm on Instagram * Godmother of Elvis Sightings video essay by Johnny Law & Order * TCBCast After Dark, Rabia's new side project with Justin...
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47: The Joker is Wild
What if someone slashed Sinatra's vocal cords at the height of his powers? Would he still be able to cut it in showbiz off his charm alone? Could he get into comedy instead of music? More importantly, what would be left of the man without his act? Of all the fictional characters Sinatra portrayed...
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Authorized x SUDDENLY - Robin and the 7 Hoods
We went on Authorized Novelizations Podcast to talk about Jack Pearl's 1964 novelisation of Sinatra's Robin and the Seven Hoods. This episode was recorded around six months ago and just released by Authorized this week. They've graciously given us permission to repost it on our feed. If you like...
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46: Why "Our Town" Matters
In Episode 43 ("Love and Marriage"), Rabia and Felix watched the infamous televised 1955 musical version of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, starring Frank Sinatra as the Stage Manager. The songs were so terrible, and the acting so bad, that Wilder personally called the station and ensured that it…
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45: Suspense
We think of Sinatra as emerging as a serious dramatic actor from the early 1950s onwards, shedding his clean-cut MGM image for the first time when he takes intense roles as mentally disturbed soldiers in From Here to Eternity and Suddenly. But there's a part of the story we've all forgotten. In...
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44: In the Wee Small Hours
In the Wee Small Hours is often considered Sinatra's best work and arguably the first concept album. The "concept" is something along the lines of "I am awake at 3am and I am feeling deeply sad about a lost love." And that's really it. Just when you think there couldn't possibly be any more songs...
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43: Love and Marriage
"Love and Marriage" was one of the worst songs Sinatra ever recorded, and the toxic ideas about marriage that it perpetuated left a negative impact on the world. This week, we look into the song's unlikely origins in a televised musical version of Thornton Wilder's Our Town and its shameful…
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42: The Tender Trap
The phrase "tender trap" essentially didn't exist before the mid-1950s, entering common usage from the film and song which were both popularised by Frank Sinatra. The image of being lured into your downfall by a thing pretending to be soft speaks to a basic element of what it is to be human, and...
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41: Sinatra Was Wrong About Israel
In a special emergency episode, we examine Frank Sinatra's long history with Israel, Palestine and Zionism. Many don't realise just how connected these topics are. This week, we weave a story all the way from Sinatra personally helping run guns to the Nakba in 1948 and his starring role as a...
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40: Church on Fire (with David Nichols)
Who burnt down West Melbourne Stadium in the middle of Sinatra's 1955 Australian tour, and why did this happen? This week, on our final episode of the year, SUDDENLY investigates. And we're joined by David Nichols - Australian history expert, senior lecturer in Urban Planning at the University of...
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39: The Big Show
Frank Sinatra's first Australian visit in 1955 followed shortly after the repeal of decades-old laws preventing "coloured" musicians, or any foreign musicians, from performing in the country. The tour was part of the initial run of the now-legendary "Big Shows" put on by mysterious American...
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38: Dream Empire (with Karina Longworth)
Surprise! We're joined from Los Angeles by the legendary Karina Longworth, renowned film historian, author, critic and host of the iconic podcast You Must Remember This. This week, we're jumping ahead to discuss HIGH SOCIETY (1956). Louis Armstrong definitely deserved better, and we tackle the...
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37: BONUS - More Guys, More Dolls
Because six hours wasn't enough, it's a special, informal bonus episode where Henry and Rabia discuss some leftover elements of our GUYS AND DOLLS series we didn't find time to discuss. Here we finish off the story of Damon Runyon's life and his legacy today, discuss the critical reception of the...
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36: Dolls
Fall in love with people, not with gamblers. It's all too strange and strong. Sit down, you're rocking the boat. This week, Henry leads us through the third and final part of our epic GUYS AND DOLLS series. We've got a spectacular supercut of Sinatra recordings of "Luck Be a Lady" through the…
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35: and
Why can't Nathan Detroit remember the colour of his own tie? In the second part of our GUYS AND DOLLS series, Henry begins taking us through the musical (and the 1955 Sinatra film) proper, beginning with "Fugue for Tinhorns", "Oldest Established" and "I'll Know." We discuss the intertwined...
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34: Guys
Henry Giardina takes the lead as host for the first time as we begin our month-long GUYS AND DOLLS odyssey. In this first installment, the stage is set as we're introduced to the world of legendary short story writer, journalist and master of the "historical present", Damon Runyon. Best known…
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33: Love Like Surgery
It's 1955 and we're deep into the masculinity crisis. It's an era of lofty 800-page novels adapted into 2-hour-plus movies. We've got navel-gazing middle-aged white men, coming out of a period of deep repression and trauma, wondering who and what they really are. Sinatra is one of their icons, as...
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32: Three Coins Reloaded (with Justin Gausman)
That's amore. Non paghiamo il fossile. And just like that... Boom, kiss, come on, God bless America. In 1966, a pilot for a potential Three Coins in the Fountain TV series was filmed on location in Rome. It only aired on TV once in August 1970, was not picked up thereafter and has never been made...
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31: Transcribed
The word "homosexual" was first uttered on American television on the night of October 21st, 1963. The show was Breaking Point, a drama series set in a psychiatric hospital. The episode was a confronting take on sexual harassment and toxic masculinity that directly posed the question to its...
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30: Lost and Found - Bobby Long and the World of Soundies (with Mark Cantor)
We found out what happened to Bobby Long. Mostly. And on this episode we're joined by Mark Cantor, America's leading jazz film archivist. Mark is an expert in "Soundies", the early music videos/short films that played on Panoram video jukeboxes in bars, cafes and other public places across…
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29: Not By Ranting, Nor By Chanting
Millions know the song: "Forget your troubles and just get happy." But where does it come from, and what does it really mean? Why are we getting ready for judgement day, and how did Judy Garland end up associated with something that sounds so gospel? This week, we dive into the long and…
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28: Glamour
In 2007, Italian artist Graziano Cecchini poured red dye into the Trevi Fountain to protest the Rome Film Festival. "You wanted just a red carpet", he said. "We want a city entirely in vermilion. We who are vulnerable, old, ill, students, workers, we come with vermilion to colour your grayness."...
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27: The Long
For almost the entire back half of the 20th century, Sinatra sang "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" over and over again. At every show, he would proudly call himself a "saloon singer" and paint a picture for the audience: a drunk, broken-hearted loser, in a bar at 2:45am, pouring his...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
SUDDENLY... exploring the 20th century from a trans, queer & radical Australian perspective through the legacy of Frank Sinatra. Catgirl noir, ring a ding ding, etc. Join us as we deep dive into Sinatra's work and the nuances of history in abstract & creative ways, with episodes structured around Sinatra's albums, songs, films and radio appearances. Hosted by Rabia & Felix in Melbourne, and Henry Giardina in Los Angeles. Check out our website: suddenlypod.gay. Contact: suddenlypod at gmail dot com. I dig you the most xx
HOSTED BY
Rabia, Felix & Henry
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does SUDDENLY: a Frank Sinatra podcast have?
SUDDENLY: a Frank Sinatra podcast currently has 77 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is SUDDENLY: a Frank Sinatra podcast about?
SUDDENLY... exploring the 20th century from a trans, queer & radical Australian perspective through the legacy of Frank Sinatra. Catgirl noir, ring a ding ding, etc. Join us as we deep dive into Sinatra's work and the nuances of history in abstract & creative ways, with episodes structured around...
How often does SUDDENLY: a Frank Sinatra podcast release new episodes?
SUDDENLY: a Frank Sinatra podcast has 77 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to SUDDENLY: a Frank Sinatra podcast?
You can listen to SUDDENLY: a Frank Sinatra podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts SUDDENLY: a Frank Sinatra podcast?
SUDDENLY: a Frank Sinatra podcast is created and hosted by Rabia, Felix & Henry.
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