The Tender Trap (film)

The Tender Trap
The Tender Trap (1955), dir. Charles Walters
Directed byCharles Walters
Written byJulius J. Epstein
Based onThe Tender Trap
1954 play
by Max Shulman
Robert Paul Smith
Produced byLawrence Weingarten
StarringFrank Sinatra
Debbie Reynolds
David Wayne
Celeste Holm
CinematographyPaul C. Vogel
Edited byJohn D. Dunning
Music byJeff Alexander
Distributed byMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date
  • November 4, 1955 (1955-11-04)
Running time
111 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1,274,000[1]
Box office$4,495,000[1][2]

The Tender Trap is a 1955 American comedy film starring Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds, David Wayne, and Celeste Holm. Directed by Charles Walters, the CinemaScope Eastman Color production was based on the 1954 play The Tender Trap by Max Shulman and Robert Paul Smith.

It marked Sinatra's return to MGM some six years after On the Town. A second film under a new contract with the studio, Guys and Dolls, was actually released ahead of The Tender Trap by one day on November 3, 1955.

The film earned an Oscar nomination in the category of Best Original Song for "(Love Is) the Tender Trap" (music by Jimmy Van Heusen and lyrics by Sammy Cahn). The song proved a hit for Sinatra, one he would continue to sing throughout his career. It is performed in a pre-credits sequence by Sinatra, sung in the film by Reynolds in a lackluster version that Sinatra corrects, and yet again at the end of the film by Sinatra, Reynolds, Holm and Wayne.

  1. ^ a b The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study.
  2. ^ US and Canada take see 'The Top Box-Office Hits of 1955', Variety Weekly, January 25, 1956.