His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [44]
The forty-year-old press agent engulfed everyone with his energy. Dynamic and hard-charging, he represented the best in the business: Duke Ellington, Lena Home, Kitty Kallen, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the Copacabana Club. He considered himself personally responsible for his clients’ success and happiness, pushing himself tirelessly on their behalf. After seeing Frank sing at the Paramount, the astute press agent worked with dervishlike energy to turn the sparks of a tossed rose and a moaning teenager into a conflagration of screaming hysterical women. In the process, George Evans made his new client the most sensational singer in the country.
“I thought if I could fill the theater with a bunch of girls moaning, ‘Oh, Frankie,’ I’ve got something there,” Evans said.
He hired twelve long-haired, round-faced little girls in bobby socks and paid them five dollars apiece to jump and scream and yell “Oh, Frankie. Oh, Frankie” when Frank started to sing one of his slow, soft ballads. He drilled them in the basement of the Paramount, directing them to holler when Frank bent and dipped certain notes. “They shouldn’t only yell and squeal, they should fall apart,” Evans said. He showed Frank how to caress the microphone, clutching it as if he were going to fall down. Then he suggested that when he sang “She’s Funny That Way” and purred the words “I’m not much to look at, nothin’ to see,” one of the girls should interrupt and yell “Oh, Frankie, yes, you are!” On “Embraceable You,” he suggested that Frank open his arms wide when he sang the words “Come to Papa, Come to Papa, do.” Then Evans instructed the girls to scream “Oh, Daddy,” telling Frank to murmur softly into the mike “Gee, that’s a lot of kids for one fellow.” Two of the girls were coached to fall in a dead faint in the aisle, while the others were told to moan in unison as loudly as they could.
To pack the theater to capacity, Evans distributed free tickets to hundreds of youngsters on school vacation. He hired an ambulance to sit outside and gave the ushers bottles of ammonia “in case a patron feels like swooning.”
Evans knew it was one thing to be a popular band singer where the band and bandleader always dominate, and quite another for a singer to be a star on his own. Evans was going to give Sinatra everything he thought he needed to become that kind of star. He told a few select columnists that a new young singer was appearing at the Paramount. He said Frank was going to be bigger than Rudy Vallee and Bing Crosby because he made women fall on the floor. Photographers were alerted, and the next day’s newspapers showed pictures of young girls being carried out “in a swoon” after seeing Frank Sinatra: Twelve were hired but thirty fainted.
By the end of the week, the ticket lines stretched around the block, and reporters were writing about the thrilling new crooner who cocked his head, hunched his shoulders, and caressed the microphone, all of which made young girls faint and old women scream.
The Paramount stayed packed for the four weeks of Benny Goodman’s engagement, and Frank was named by Metronome as the top male vocalist in the country. Bob Weitman immediately signed him for another four weeks, saying it was the first time a performer had been held over since Rudy Vallee was the nation’s singing idol in 1929. Then he hired extra guards for crowd control.
By this time, George Evans was in manic overdrive. He christened his client “Swoonatra” or “The Voice.” He called his mooning fans “Sinatratics,” and labeled the swooning phenomenon “Sinatraism,” all of which was immediately adopted by the press. He encouraged bobby-soxers to form their own fan clubs, hold mass meetings, and write letters to the newspapers about their hero. Each fan club received a flossy embossed parchment charter signed by Frank.
Within weeks, Evans was calling reporters to tell them that more than one thousand Sinatra fan clubs had sprung up in the United States, among them the Moonlit Sinatra Club, The Slaves