The First Deadly Sin

TCM's Dave Karger introduces The First Deadly Sin, 1980.

TCM's Dave Karger introduces The First Deadly Sin, 1980.

Working with customer index cards obtained from a Manhattan sporting goods specialty store, after a murderer who owns an unusual ice-axe, cop Delaney (Frank Sinatra, in his last movie role) instructs volunteer helpers, Brenda Vaccaro as a victim’s widow, and Martin Gabel as an aging museum curator, in The First Deadly Sin, 1980.

First at the scene of a Manhattan murder he’s investigating then, as novelist Lawrence Sanders’ detective Edward Delaney, Frank Sinatra, in his last movie role, visits his wife (Faye Dunaway as Barbara), who is hospitalized throughout the picture with kidney troubles, in The First Deadly Sin, 1980.

With Anna Navarro, well-known TV actress and wife of the producer George Pappas, as jailed hooker Sunny, Frank Sinatra, in his last movie, as Lawrence Sanders’ New York detective Edward Delaney, asks what she knows about victim of a murder he’s hoping to resolve, just weeks before his retirement, in The First Deadly Sin, 1980.

First scene for Frank Sinatra in his last movie, for sure shooting on West 81st St. in Manhattan, outside the Mt. Pleasant Baptist church, as Lawrence Sanders’ New York cop Edward Delaney, consulting with James Whitmore as the coroner, examining a victim, early in The First Deadly Sin, 1980.