The Naked Runner

The Naked Runner is a 1967 British espionage film directed by Sidney J. Furie and starring Frank Sinatra, Peter Vaughan and Edward Fox. It was the last film Sinatra made with Warner Bros. and is largely viewed as being a fairly disastrous end to his association with the studio.

Plot

Sam Laker (Sinatra) is a former World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative who is recruited by his former commanding officer to do a mission whilst he attends a business conference in Leipzig. To insure his cooperation, his son is kidnapped.

Production

Sinatra was in need of a hit -- Marriage on the Rocks and Assault on a Queen having flopped in the two previous years -- so he put actor and trusted aide Brad Dexter in charge of finding a suitable vehicle. After negotiations for him to star in Harper fell through, The Naked Runner was plan B. Sinatra had been impressed with 1965's The IPCRESS File and recruited its director Sidney J. Furie. Among the film's co-stars were Peter Vaughan, Derren Nesbitt and Edward Fox. Sinatra's fee was an at the time massive $1 million plus box-office participation.

The Naked (band)

The Naked was a Danish indie-rock band that existed from the end of the 1980s and disbanded in 1999. The band started out under the name Naked Lunch, later shortening the name to Naked, and finally to The Naked.

The band was formed by Kasper Andersen (vocal, guitar) and Jacob Als Thomsen (guitar), who met in high school in the mid-eighties. Andersen started out as drummer, but switched to guitar after Thomsen left temporarily to study abroad. At this time guitarist Anders Reuss and bass player Søren Rohde had joined. The band rehearsed with a drum machine until Emil Landgreen joined the band as a drummer in the summer of 1990, coinciding with the return of Thomsen. This line-up started playing regularly on the Copenhagen underground scene from late 1990. At the time of the band's first album, Søren Rohde had left to be replaced by Andreas Koch on bass. During the recording Landgreen left to join Speaker Bite Me and was replaced by Rene Thorny. Astrid Bruun Johansen joined on viola after the second album.