His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [43]
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In 1942, driven by the tensions and deprivations of a country at war, people on the home front began spending lavishly for entertainment. They were so eager to be distracted that they flocked to theaters at all hours, forcing movie houses in Portland, Oregon, to stay open all night and feature a “swing-shift matinee” for workers from midnight to four o’clock in the morning. Live music was the best entertainment available, and the public handsomely rewarded its musicians, especially those singers whose way with a romantic lyric touched deep longings. Nelson Eddy was the highest paid musician in the country in 1942, commanding more than seven thousand dollars for a concert.
Managers of large theaters in New York City, Boston, and Chicago tried to book one of the big bands when they showed a new feature film. People wanted to hear Helen O’Connell sing “Embraceable You” with Jimmy Dorsey’s orchestra or to listen to Eddy Duchin play “Stormy Weather.” They loved swaying to Les Brown’s orchestra and toe-tapping to Glenn Miller’s “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.”
Sinatra’s last performance with Tommy Dorsey was in September 1942. From then on he was on his own.
Bob Weitman, manager of New York’s Paramount Theater, booked Benny Goodman, the King of Swing and the country’s number one bandleader, as the star attraction for the New Year’s show that year. Featured with the famous clarinetist were singer Peggy Lee, Jess Stacy on the piano, and the Benny Goodman sextet. At the last minute, Weitman decided to add a scrawny singer who couldn’t read a note of music but who had made the girls swoon when he performed the week before at the Mosque Theater in Newark, New Jersey.
“I still don’t know exactly why I did it,” said Weitman. “I had Star Spangled Rhythm as the picture for those weeks, and that certainly didn’t need extra attractions.… Benny Goodman could pack the house himself. But there was something about this kid.”
Sinatra had been a top band singer, but now he didn’t have the Dorsey band behind him. And he knew that Benny Goodman, a serious musician, was conscious only of his clarinet and his orchestra, nothing else, certainly not of any new up-and-coming singers. The King of Swing had never heard of Sinatra. Billed as an “extra added attraction,” the twenty-seven-year-old singer in the floppy bow tie was almost paralyzed by stage fright as he waited to walk to the microphone for that first show on December 30, 1942. It was a long wait. Benny Goodman dazzled the audience with his music for an hour before making his laconic introduction—“And now, Frank Sinatra.”
Sinatra stuck his head and one foot out through the curtains—and froze. Immediately, the girls let out a scream. Sinatra still couldn’t move a muscle. They sent up such a tremendous roar that the startled bandleader also froze, his arms raised on the upbeat. He looked over one shoulder and said to no one in particular, “What the fuck was that?”
Hearing him, Frank started laughing and ran to the microphone to sing “For Me and My Gal.”
A few days later Nick Sevano brought a new press agent to the show.
“Up to this point,” Sevano said, “the publicity had been handled by a guy named Milt Rubin, who was very close to Walter Winchell. Milt didn’t fawn over Frank the way he was supposed to. In fact, he sometimes acted like Winchell was more important than our boy and that was his undoing. Then Manie Sacks suggested George Evans, who handled Glenn Miller and the Copa. He was the biggest thing to ever happen to Frank.
“I was bringing George Evans down the aisle to get closer to the stage,” recalled Nick Sevano. “A girl stood up and threw a rose at Frank, and the girl next to her moaned a little. That’s all George needed to