Cinema: Such a Business

Come Blow Your Horn is a comedy of props. Frank Sinatra's Manhattan apartment, which seems to have been decorated on a dare by a Playboy Club Bunny, has more doors than Mother Hubbard's cupboard, all with the wrong people on the other side. And for telephones Frank has a red one, a black one, a Princess, an antique French, a Swedish one-piece, and a mobile unit in the Buick, all with the wrong people on the other end of the line.

In this den of doubletalk and doubletake, Playboy Sinatra struggles against his mossback parents (Molly Picon and Lee J. Cobb) to put a long-overdue end to the shocking innocence of his kid brother, Tony Bill. At 21, and out of college, Tony is just a nice Jewish kid who has never tasted a martini or smoked a cigarette orit would seem -kissed a girl. He comes to live with Frank and get made over in the Sinatra image: a wardrobe of silk suits, spread-collar shirts, pointy shoes, and a set of attitudes that includes a taste for doxies and fancy barbers. Papa Cobb takes it pretty hard, but his highest loyalty is to his stomach. Peering into the refrigerator, he recoils at the sight of all the foil-wrapped leftovers, cries: "This ain't an icebox, it's an aluminum mine!"