Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [192]
Obvious to whom? Frank’s absolute composure was—now more than ever—mostly an artful illusion. And television was not to be his medium. The whiff of arrogance, whether contrived or real, made him a hot presence on the cool tube: the contrast jangled. Nor did he have much of a gift for comedy, the lifeblood of television variety. He was too angry, too edgy. In a sketch on the Hope show he played—of all people—Bing Crosby, the avatar of cool. The results were less than impressive, counteracting the magic Frank had spun with his singing. “If TV is his oyster, Sinatra hasn’t broken out of his shell,” Variety noted.
The day after his television debut, Frank went back to radio—for one more week. His contract for Light Up Time had expired, and Lucky Strike wasn’t hustling to renew. Yet another company had cut him loose. On Monday, June 5, he was officially at liberty.
In the meantime, Jaffe was in talks with CBS, which was laboring mightily to squeeze some value out of its rapidly diminishing asset, to create a pair of vehicles for Sinatra that fall: another radio program and, against all better judgment, a TV show. Frank was also booked at London’s Palladium in early July; until then, he was facing an empty month, and a vacation was the last thing he needed. His voice was back; he wanted to sing.
In late May and early June, while Sinatra’s first collaboration with Mitch Miller, the dreadful “American Beauty Rose,” was having its brief moment at the bottom of the charts, it became clear to Miller that none of the other eight up-tempo numbers Frank had recorded that spring were tickling the public’s fancy. Accordingly, the producer decided to take a stronger hand with his star. If the public didn’t want to hear Sinatra swing, then maybe he should sing something else.
Miller had been instrumental in the decision to move Sinatra up-tempo, but it had been Frank and George Siravo who’d made all the creative decisions in April. For the session on June 28, Miller had a new concept, one he controlled completely. The songs, “Goodnight Irene” and “Dear Little Boy of Mine,” had an earnest, folksy quality (“Irene” had recently been a big hit for the Weavers), and to heighten that quality, background voices were used—the Mitch Miller Singers. Miller himself, naturally, arranged and conducted. And Frank Sinatra just sang along with Mitch.
If he hated it, it didn’t show. Sinatra was in excellent voice on both numbers—utterly unsuited to his character and personality though they were. Listen to them, and even with the corny background chorus they almost make sense. In fact, “Goodnight Irene” went straight to number 5 on the Billboard charts, Sinatra’s biggest hit in over three years.
Ava had finished all her location shooting for Pandora. All that remained were some interiors, to be filmed at Shepperton Studios outside of London. With a fond farewell to Spain and an hasta la vista to Mario Cabré, she moved into a luxury flat near Hyde Park, and a corps of reporters and photographers promptly set up camp at her doorstep. She greeted them with husky-voiced, affectionate ribaldries when she went out in the morning and returned at night, and they, like everyone else, fell in love with her.
On July 5, Sinatra flew to England, in high spirits: Henry Jaffe had arm wrestled Bill Paley into giving Frank a five-year contract for a TV variety show, to commence in October. (CBS also threw in a new radio show, Meet Frank Sinatra, to start concurrently.) At $200,000 per annum, the deal was potentially worth $1 million, and while it was subject to all sorts of provisos, escape clauses, and caveats, it theoretically gave Sinatra the edge over Bing Crosby as the highest-paid singer in show business.
Landing in London was like stepping out of a time machine. In the States, it was a new, bad decade: President Truman had just sent U.S. troops to Korea; Joe McCarthy was rapping pieces of paper and barking threats. In England, where