On 11.23.11 or 12 and 1/2 years ago I wrote that Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio (then 37) were apparently seriously interested in a Frank Sinatra biopic with Leo playing the relatively short-statured Hoboken crooner.

I was relieved when this idea fell by the wayside as DiCaprio’s physical characteristics don’t even vaguely echo Sinatra’s (zero facial resemblance, Leo is way too tall and not skinny enough, the timbre of their speaking voices couldn’t be further apart).

But now this crazy idea is back again with Variety’s Tatiana Siegel filling in some of the details.

The focus will be on the volatile early ‘50s chapter of Sinatra’s career (seriously slumping as a singer and an actor, embroiled in a torrential marriage to Ava Gardner) and how he was finally rescued and restored by his Pvt. Maggio performance in From Here to Eternity (‘53).

Except the about-to-turn-50 Leo (DOB: 11.11.74) is too old to play Sinatra in his late 30s, plus he’s still the wrong size and shape and everything else.

Plus Jennifer Lawrence can’t possibly pull off an Ava Gardner performance…not in the cards.

Here’s a portion of what I said about the “Frank DiCaprio” project in late November of 2011:

Martin Scorsese is dead serious about wanting Leonardo DiCaprio to play Frank Sinatra in a forthcoming biopic.

This has always struck me as a ridiculous idea. The physical shorthand for Sinatra before he hit 50 and starting putting on weight was always “short and skinny” (he was about 5’8″), and Leo is around six feet tall with moderately broad shoulders. There’s not even a slight resemblance between them. Sinatra had a narrowish face (especially in the early ‘50s) with a pronounced Italian nose, and DiCaprio has a wide Germanic face with a smallish nose.

DiCaprio as Sinatra is like casting Joseph Gordon Levitt as Cary Grant or Jason Segel as Spencer Tracy or Seth Rogen as Henry Fonda. It’s one of those “WTF?” calls.

Scorsese should be talking to Johnny Depp about this film. Depp isn’t perfect but he could be made to half-resemble Sinatra with blue contact lenses and nose putty, etc. I could buy him in the role, but DiCaprio is an even worse fit for Sinatra than he was for J. Edgar Hoover and Howard Hughes.

Doesn’t DiCaprio need to give his biopic thing a break? Doesn’t he need to give the Scorsese partnership a break also (and vice versa)? Doesn’t he need to play the lead in a shallow but charming romantic comedy like Working Girl or Legal Eagles…something like that?

If you were Fred Zinneman, director of From Here to Eternity, what would you say if someone pulled you aside as you were shooting the barroom knife-fight scene between Sinatra, Ernest Borgnine and Burt Lancaster (who was around 6’1″, or less than an inch taller than DiCaprio) and said, “Sixty years from now a major director is going to shoot a Sinatra biopic with a guy who’s almost exactly Lancaster’s build and height to play Sinatra…whaddaya think about that?” Zinneman would probably laugh.

Consider Burt Lancaster and Frank Sinatra in From Here to Eternity — their height difference would be approximately reflected in the size disparity between DiCaprio and Sinatra.