His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [65]
Silvers’s unit included Saul Chaplin as accompanist, Betty Yeaton, an acrobatic dancer, and Fay Mackenzie, an actress with a fine singing voice. In May 1945, Frank met the group in New York after making news by bumping an Iwo Jima veteran to get a seat on the plane from Los Angeles. He was further criticized for making his first USO tour a few days after victory in Europe had been declared and the Germans had unconditionally surrendered their entire military force to General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
When the group landed in Rome, Frank refused to stay in the three-floor walk-up hotel where they had been booked. “We’ll stay at the Excelsior,” he announced. It was the best hotel in town and booked to capacity, Silvers recalled, but Sinatra somehow managed to get everyone in. Next, he decided that he wanted an audience with Pope Pius XII.
“Come on, Frank,” said Phil Silvers. “What’ve you been smoking?”
Frank called Myron Taylor, President Roosevelt’s envoy to the Vatican, and the appointment was made. Frank told Silvers that he planned to tell the pope of a few things happening in the United States that he might not be aware of. “Like that bigot Father Coughlin in Detroit. This priest is doing a lot of damage to the Church.”
When the Sinatra group was ushered into a private room of the Vatican, Frank knelt to kiss the ring of St. Peter. The pope then asked him if he was a tenor.
“No, Your Holiness, I’m a baritone.”
“Ah, and what operas do you sing?”
“I—ah—don’t sing opera, Your Holiness.”
“And where did you study?”
“I—ah—never studied.”
Frank received his blessing from the pope without enlightening him about the fallibility of the Catholic Church in Detroit. His Holiness next turned to Phil, who was carrying rosary beads he had bought to have blessed for Bing Crosby. The pope seemed much more familiar with this singer than he had been with Frank and even gave Silvers an extra string of blessed beads for Mrs. Crosby.
Afterward, Frank punched Phil’s arm hard and said, “You creepy bum! I take you in to see the pope—and you’re plugging Crosby.”
Phil Silvers had deliberated about how to introduce Sinatra to the troops.
“I knew Frank had to be presented in a very special way. I couldn’t give him the usual build-up—‘And here he is, the idol of America’s youth!’—because those youths in uniform might have thrown C-ration cans.
“I suggested to Frank that he be presented as the underdog of the show. I would open with a few well-aimed Army jokes—food, the draft, civilian clothes. Then Frank wanders on, casually. Jokes about Frank: ‘I know there’s a food shortage, but this is ridiculous. He weighed twelve pounds when he was born, and he’s been losing weight ever since.’ Frank asks if he can sing. We go into my singing-lesson bit. I shape his tones, slap his cheeks, browbeat him, convince him he can’t sing at all. Then my clarinet bit, for which Frank goes into the audience and heckles me. By this time I figured the men would be demanding, ‘Let Sinatra sing!’ The soldiers had been underdogs so long, I was sure they would love this underdog.”
The routine worked. Frank made his first appearance before the troops and let Phil pull his ears, squeeze his cheeks, and slap him across the stage. The soldiers cheered loudly and then begged Frank to sing “Nancy with the Laughing Face,” a song that Phil had written with Jimmy Van Heusen in honor of Little Nancy Sinatra’s fourth birthday.
“He had those boys in the palm of his skinny hand,” said Phil Silvers.
The New York Times agreed, saying, “The singer kidded himself throughout the program and had the audience on his side all the way.”
After touring the Mediterranean theater, the group re turned to the