In pursuing a tribute to Frank Sinatra, Robert Davi is no bad actor

Robert Davi plays bad good.

Really good.

Davi has played such bad guys as the villainous Jake Fratelli in “The Goonies,” Al Torres in “Showgirls” and, most notoriously, drug merchant Franz Sanchez in the 1989 James Bond film “Licence to Kill.”

Davi is so good at being bad that, upon meeting the gritty actor and soulful vocalist, you sort of think he might really be bad.

But Davi is not so bad. Not really. His tempering of one of his most famous film roles, that of Jake in “The Goonies,” reveals such.

“I had a scene that was all improvised, he scene with Sloth, the deformed brother, who was played by John Matuszak,” said Davi, whose tribute to Frank Sinatra runs Thursday through Saturday at the Venetian Showroom. “In this scene, I am supposed to feed him, and the way it is written was, as I put the food out, as he goes to grab it, I just move it away, sadistically, taunting him. It’s very, very cruel, the way it was written.”

But Davi made a suggestion, or two, to a man with an open and creative mind named Steven Spielberg. Spielberg produced and co-wrote the film with Christopher Columbus. Davi also roped director Richard Donner into his hoped-for revisions.

“I thought, this is a kid’s film. There are going to be a lot of kids in it. I wanted to bring some empathy toward Jake Fratelli, the character I played,” Davi said during the most recent episode of “Kats With the Dish,” a show also featuring two members of Chippendales at the Rio and an interview so powerful that it is running on consecutive weeks on KUNV 91.5-FM (including Friday at 6 p.m.). “So I said to Spielberg and Dick Donner, ‘I want to make him a frustrated opera singer, that the only one who listens to him is his brother, who is chained in the basement. He has to listen for his supper.’

“When he doesn’t listen to me, that’s rude, then my behavior is justified, ‘See, you’re just like Mama and Francis.”

Davi added some physical comedy, too.

“I then made Anne Ramsey, who played Mama Fratelli, slap me every time I asked a question,” Davi said. “That was my idea …I wanted (Jake) to be a big kid, having to deal with a mother, even though he was a mobster, a counterfeiter.”

Those were good moves that made the film, and made the film better.

Having turned back more “bad guy” roles than he has accepted, Davi is indeed a heartfelt man and a wonderful singer. His tribute show, “Davi Sings Sinatra: On the Road to Romance,” brings his soul to the fore.

“My first love, first off, was singing and acting. That was what I wanted to do as a kid,” Davi said during the 30-minute session with Tricia McCrone and me. Davi was born and raised in Queens and states, quite believably, “Sinatra was the epitome of what to be for an Italian-American kid. He mastered both -- he was an incredible actor, as well as an incredible artist in music.”

Davi remembers Sinatra as the first superstar who fought against anti-Semitism in the entertainment industry.

“This music is a cohesive optimism we share,” Davi said. “Sinatra was a cultural leader, as well as being a great artist.”

Davi is performing standards in the Venetian production, digging deep into the Great American Songbook and performing songs from his latest release, after which the show is named.

Backing Davi is a 20-piece orchestra, and any time you have a chance to see 20 great musicians performing simultaneously on the Strip, take it. Davi is particularly excited that Emil Richards, who played vibes in Sinatra’s orchestra from 1959-1974, is joining onstage. Richards has played for a wide range of artists ranging from Paul McCartney to Ravi Shankar to Sinatra, and even played at the Copa Room at the Sands. As Davi says, “It’s worth coming just to see Emil.”

The music director is pianist, arranger and composer Randy Waldman, who worked for years with Barbra Streisand.

“When I am singing, I feel like I’m being let out of prison,” Davi said. “This is about communication with the audience, about immediacy. There is a thrilling aspect to it, like skydiving.”

Though Davi is not a skydiver. He’s quite a storyteller, though, and shared a great tale during the broadcast. Two months before he was cast in his first film, 1977’s “Cherry Street,” Davi was fired from his job as a waiter.

“I was working at Fiorello’s, an Italian restaurant across from Lincoln Center. I got fired because I wasn’t paying off the general manager, but I didn’t know you had to pay off the general manager,” Davi said. “So one night we were filming ‘Cherry Street’ in Little Italy and Harry Guardino, who was in the film, calls and says, ‘The old man wants to have dinner.’ ”

The old man, in this instance, was Frank Sinatra.

“We get in the car and we start to drive to a place I thought was gonna be Patsy’s on East 56th Street, which we used to go to. It’s a great Italian restaurant,” Davi said. “No. We make a U-turn at Lincoln Center -- Fiorello’s!

“So I’m in the car, we pull up, I look over at Sinatra, and he’s smiling. Guardino looks like the cat that just swallowed the canary. We go in the joint, and the same people who I had just been working with, and the general manager, were there. Not a word was said. It was just, there I was, with Sinatra, doing my first film.”

It was the greatest scene not in any Davi film. As they say, bravo!

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWithTheDish.