Frank_ The Voice Part 7

Bing wasn't the only one who had to move over. Lana Turner, who Buddy Rich sweetly believed only had eyes for him ("Lana was the love of Buddy's life," said Rich's sister. "And he was the only one that didn't know about her"), was methodically sleeping her way up the band's hierarchy. First came a musician or two, then Dorsey himself, and then the man Turner was canny enough to realize now stood at the pinnacle. Tommy, the anti-sentimentalist, knew all about it: one night he bribed a waiter at the Hollywood Plaza to put his dirty dinner dishes, instead of the romantic supper Sinatra had ordered up for Lana and himself, under the food covers on the room-service cart.

So much for Alora Gooding.2

The story of Frank Sinatra's life is one of continual shedding, both of artistic ident.i.ties and of a.s.sociates and intimates who had outlived their usefulness. The saga of his disentanglement from one of his most powerful relationships, his deep emotional and artistic bond with Tommy Dorsey, is complex and bewildering. Out of forgetfulness, self-protection, and self-mythification, Sinatra sowed no small amount of the confusion himself. When a man he admired, Sidney Zion, was bold enough to ask him, in front of an audience at Yale Law School, about the fabled role of organized crime in the tale, Sinatra parried with a genteel vagueness that befitted the surroundings-and that let himself more or less completely off the hook.

"Now, in the story that is told in The G.o.dfather... The G.o.dfather... about how you happened to get let out of the contract of Mr. Dorsey..., somebody came there and put a gun at his head or whatever," Mr. Zion said. "There's been a million stories. I heard one the other day from a guy who said..., 'It wasn't the Italians, the Jews did it, and they put a trombone down Harry James's throat.' I said, 'Are you sure it was a trombone or a trumpet down Harry James's throat?' So he had that a little wrong. But there's been a lot of stories about this, made famous through the years, and I think it would be interesting to set it straight." about how you happened to get let out of the contract of Mr. Dorsey..., somebody came there and put a gun at his head or whatever," Mr. Zion said. "There's been a million stories. I heard one the other day from a guy who said..., 'It wasn't the Italians, the Jews did it, and they put a trombone down Harry James's throat.' I said, 'Are you sure it was a trombone or a trumpet down Harry James's throat?' So he had that a little wrong. But there's been a lot of stories about this, made famous through the years, and I think it would be interesting to set it straight."

Sinatra, seventy and dignified now, smiled in a distinguished way and proceeded to set the record anything but straight. "Well, it's quite simple, really," he said. (It was anything but.) "It got so blown out of proportion that it took a long time to clarify it...I'll tell you here now, for your edification, as to what happened with it-if it's important at all. Really, it's pa.s.se, it's so old now."

Shut up, he explained.

"The reason I wanted to leave the orchestra," he continued, "was because Crosby was number one, way up on top of the pile, and in the field...were some awfully good singers with the orchestras. Bob Eberly with Jimmy Dorsey's Orchestra was a fabulous vocalist. Mr. Como was with Ted Weems, and he still is such a wonderful singer. I thought if I don't make a move out of this band and try to do it on my own soon, one of those guys will do it, and I'll have to fight all three of them, from Crosby all the way down to the other two, to get a position. So I took a shot and I gave Mr. Dorsey one year's notice. It was in September whatever year. I said, 'I'm going to leave the band one year from that day.' Beyond that year, I had another six months to do in the contract. He said, 'Sure.' That's all he said, was 'Sure.'"

Sure.

In fact, Mr. Sinatra gave Mr. Dorsey his notice in February 1942, with ten months left to run on the three-year contract he'd signed in January 1940, and he would continue to sing with the Dorsey band for just seven of those months, and it is quite unlikely that Tommy Dorsey responded to this highly unwelcome news with a simple "Sure."

We have this last from no less an authority than Art Linkletter-yes, the Art Linkletter of 1950s afternoon-television fame, who as a young reporter in February 1942 went backstage at San Francisco's Golden Gate Theatre to interview Tommy Dorsey, and found that Sinatra had just given notice, and that Dorsey was not happy. "He's such a d.a.m.n fool," the bandleader vented to the kid journalist. "He's a great singer, but you know, you can't make it without a band...Does he think he can go out on his own, as good as he is? It upsets me because he's an important part of our band."

What Dorsey wouldn't say-or couldn't bring himself to say-was how betrayed he felt by Sinatra. This was a boy he had taught his deepest art, a boy he had elevated to national fame! A boy who had sat up till all hours playing cards with him...one who, despite the mere ten years' difference between their ages, had been like a son to him-and who had treated him, in many ways, like a father. And now, inevitably, the youth was leaving the nest. The bandleader was a tightly wound, thickly self-protected man, one who nursed his hurts deep in the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt of his soul, and this was a wound that would stay with him till the end of his days.

Sinatra himself hadn't come to his decision lightly. Where his career was concerned, he never did anything lightly. He tormented Sevano and Sanicola-when he wasn't complaining of hypochondriacal symptoms, he was telling his minions, "I gotta do it, I gotta do it." Sevano recalled: "He kept telling me, 'I gotta do it before Bob Eberly does it.'

"He was like a Mack truck going one hundred miles an hour without brakes," Sevano said. "He had me working around the clock. 'Call Frank Cooper [an agent at the management company General Amus.e.m.e.nt Corporation, recommended by Manie Sacks]. Do it now. Don't wait until tomorrow...Send my publicity photos to Walter Winch.e.l.l. Get my records to the Lucky Strike Hit Parade Hit Parade.'"

Those he couldn't order around, he seduced. "I was sitting with Sinatra, and we were talking," Sammy Cahn remembered. "And he says, 'I'm going to be the world's greatest singer.' And I looked at him, and I'll never forget it, I said, 'There's no doubt in my mind. You are the world's greatest singer.' He said, 'Do you mean it?' I said, 'What do you mean, do I mean it? You're the best. You're the best. There's n.o.body better than you. You're the best.'"

This was a complicated moment, an intricate dance between two talented men. In part Cahn was being obsequious: as a lyricist, he had a career to further, and he correctly sensed that Sinatra could be an important part of it. But as a friend, he was also being utterly honest: Sinatra was the best.

Was Sinatra-Do you mean it?-being coy? Of course he was. He knew exactly how good he was.

But as always, the one who understood Frank Sinatra most deeply was his chief victim and champion, the girl who had known him when. "Tommy was a good teacher because he had a great band, and he had wonderful vocalists with him, and they were great together," Nancy Barbato Sinatra said. "But without Tommy I know it still would have happened...Frank had a master plan for himself, and he worked at getting there. I think he always had it in the back of his mind that this was a stepping stone."

As was she. As was almost everyone with whom Sinatra ever had a significant relationship. He would step on or over everyone in his path until he grasped the bra.s.s ring. The master plan for himself was exactly that: for himself. Alone.

His master plan now included Manie Sacks of Columbia, who had formally agreed to sign Sinatra the moment he was legally divorced from Dorsey and RCA.

In the months after Sinatra gave notice, Tommy Dorsey went through the cla.s.sic five stages of grief. There was denial, anger, bargaining, depression-and eventually acceptance, but only after ferocious resistance (on Dorsey's part), legal maneuvering (on both sides), and the possible introduction (by parties unknown) of a firearm.

In the meantime, Sinatra worked at a frenetic pace for Dorsey in the spring and summer of 1942. From California, the band one-nighted its way back east and opened a monthlong stand at the New York Paramount on April Fools' Day. Dorsey was at the peak of his powers and popularity: he wanted to milk it for all it was worth. (And with the IRS and his soon-to-be ex on his case, he badly needed the money.) If Sinatra stole the show, that was all right-it just meant more dough in Tommy's pocket. Moreover, if Sinatra really was going to leave, Dorsey wanted to squeeze as much work out of him as possible.

In advance of a rumored American Federation of Musicians strike over the summer, Dorsey also wanted to record as much as possible, to stockpile sides that could be released if there was a strike. Sinatra was happy to comply: he knew his freedom was imminent.

With the war raging in Europe and the Pacific (and not going well at first), millions of young men, including dozens of musicians, were joining up.3 One of them was Artie Shaw, who'd enlisted with the Coast Guard in early 1942, and had promptly bequeathed his entire string section, eight players in all, to Dorsey. Buddy Rich was disgusted; Sinatra, delighted. The poignancy of string-backed ballads like "Just as Though You Were Here," "There Are Such Things," and "In the Blue of Evening" fit the country's anxious mood-and the singer's career plans-perfectly. It was as if Dorsey were rehearsing Frank for the next stage in his professional life. One of them was Artie Shaw, who'd enlisted with the Coast Guard in early 1942, and had promptly bequeathed his entire string section, eight players in all, to Dorsey. Buddy Rich was disgusted; Sinatra, delighted. The poignancy of string-backed ballads like "Just as Though You Were Here," "There Are Such Things," and "In the Blue of Evening" fit the country's anxious mood-and the singer's career plans-perfectly. It was as if Dorsey were rehearsing Frank for the next stage in his professional life.

Just as though you were here. ("I'll wake each morning, and I'll promise to laugh/I'll say good morning to your old photograph.") Now and then that spring, Frank popped up at home-new, nicer digs in a two-family house on Bergen Avenue in Jersey City-to pay a visit to two-year-old Nancy and Big Nancy, who was taking off the weight and looking at him hopefully. He tried to summon up some of the ardor he'd once felt, then gave her a good-bye peck on the cheek: he had places to go.

Many years later, Nancy junior would remember the civil-defense blackouts of 1942: "The curtains drawn. The lights turned off. And Mom and I sitting on the floor, holding each other in the darkness. Daddy was busy, I guess. He was, it seemed, a voice on the radio most of the time, or a picture in the newspaper...a figure composed of a bow tie and two black patent leather shoes, who was always going away."

After another eight-week run at the Astor roof in May and June (the prom girls wailing around the bandstand, a few getting lucky afterward), the band went back on the road. In Chicago, in July, Sinatra, feeling expansive, asked Dorsey if he wanted help finding a new singer. Frank mentioned as a possibility-poetic justice-his replacement with Harry James's Music Makers, d.i.c.k Haymes. Haymes was a good-looking blond guy who'd gone to Hollywood to try to break into pictures, and wound up singing instead. He had a romantic light baritone, and the girls loved him-but not the way they loved Sinatra. Haymes made them sigh; Sinatra made them nuts.

Despite the fact that he'd already given his notice, the suggestion did not go down well. "[Tommy] said, 'No no no, you're not going to leave this band,'" Sinatra recalled. "'Not as easy as you think you are.' Well, words began to be back-and-forth, and finally he made it very difficult-and I left the band anyway."

Thus began the anger phase. Dorsey, who was drinking heavily that summer (he'd inaugurated the Astor roof engagement by getting into a boozy backstage fistfight with his brother Jimmy), promptly stopped speaking to Sinatra, and didn't start again until the end of August, when it became clear that the singer was going to leave no matter what. Acceptance had finally set in. "Let him go," Dorsey said with a shrug. "Might be the best thing for me."

What definitely wasn't the best thing for the bandleader was that Sinatra had yanked Axel Stordahl right out from under him, making the arranger an offer he couldn't possibly refuse: $650 a month, five times what Tommy was paying him. It was money Sinatra didn't have-yet-but it was a brilliant move: he knew old Sibelius could make him sound even better than he already did. Dorsey was furious, but there was nothing he could do: he had been thoroughly out-flanked.

The bargaining then-if you could call it that. What happened next was a Mephistophelian sit-down between the singer and Dorsey and Dorsey's agent Leonard Vannerson, a meeting at which each side felt, not quite accurately, that it was holding a hand full of aces. In exchange for Sinatra's release, plus an advance of $17,000 (at least $225,000 today) to start his solo career, Dorsey and Vannerson had Frank sign a piece of paper-one can almost smell the sulfurous fumes rising from it-that made Dorsey his manager, and guaranteed not just a 10 percent agent's fee to Vannerson but also 33.3 percent of Sinatra's gross earnings to Tommy, either (by some accounts) in perpetuity or for the next ten years. The truth of the matter is that in those days, ten years might as well have been perpetuity. A singer going out on his own in 1942 might as well have been sailing over the edge of the earth in 1492. And there was a war on! G.o.d knew where anyone would be after all that time-ten years meant Frank Sinatra would still be performing in ...1952 ...1952. Who could imagine such a thing?

Frank Cooper, the agent to whom Manie Sacks had sent Sinatra, took one look at that Faustian contract and blanched. Not only would the singer be forking over 43.3 percent to Dorsey and Vannerson, but he'd also have to pay Cooper's Cooper's 10 percent. Plus income tax. 10 percent. Plus income tax.

Sinatra smiled at the poor, sputtering mortal. "Don't worry," he told Cooper. "I'm not paying him a quarter." Meaning Dorsey.

Dolly's son had learned his lessons well.

Sinatra made his last radio broadcast with the Dorsey band on September 3, at the Circle Theater in Indianapolis. On the intro to "The Song Is You," you can sense the chaos under Tommy's steely-smooth, slickly cadenced patter. "After tonight," the bandleader told the Hoosier audience, "he's going to be strictly on his own. And Frank, I want to tell you that everyone in the band wishes you the best of luck."

"Thanks, Mac," Sinatra says, using the nickname Jimmy Dorsey had given his brother when the two were boys. The singer's voice sounds very young, very Hoboken, and-surprisingly-soft with emotion. "I'd like to say that I'm gonna miss all you guys after kickin' around for three years. And ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to meet the boy who's gonna take my place as the vocalist with Tommy and the band-he's a fine guy, a wunnerful singer, and he was good enough for Harry James and Benny Goodman, and-that's really sayin' plenty. Folks, I'd like you to meet d.i.c.k Haymes."

After a nice round of applause, Haymes pipes up: "Well, Frank, I don't know if anyone can really take your place with this band. But I'm gonna be in there tryin'. You can bet on that. As for you, well, I know that you'll be knockin' 'em dead on your own hook."

Then it's almost as if d.i.c.k Haymes actually gets the hook-Dorsey jumps right back in, just about cutting him off: "I agree with you there, d.i.c.k, and thanks a lot, d.i.c.k Haymes-Frank, before you hit the road, how 'bout one more song just for-auld lang syne."

"That's all right with me, Tom," Sinatra says. "Gimme the beat on our arrangement of 'The Song Is You,' and I'll see what I can do with it."

It's all old-style s...o...b..z corn, phony modesty an inch thick, but when Sinatra shifts from those Hoboken street tones to the first few bars of the Kern and Hammerstein masterpiece, you do a double take: the Voice is that rich, gorgeous, and expressive.4 Look out world, here I come Look out world, here I come, is the clear message-along with a quick Good luck, kiddo Good luck, kiddo to d.i.c.k Haymes. And a quick thumb of the nose to Tommy Dorsey. to d.i.c.k Haymes. And a quick thumb of the nose to Tommy Dorsey.

The way he ends the song-an ethereal falsetto high F-has an infinitely vulnerable sound: as always, his emotions were powerful and complicated. Dorsey told a magazine writer years later that at a party backstage after the show, Sinatra "was literally crying on my shoulder...depressed about what would happen to his career." Depressed? Good and scared was more like it. He had Tommy's seventeen grand in his pocket, but that would burn fast, especially with the way he spent. (He had just put down a payment on his first house, a wood-frame Cape with a front porch, in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey.) What he didn't have were bookings. Cooper had managed to land him a bit part singing one number, "Night and Day," in a Columbia B picture, Reveille with Beverly Reveille with Beverly, and Sacks had w.a.n.gled him a spot on a CBS radio show in New York. Period. Besides that, it was going to be strictly Sit and Wait.

He was terribly frightened. Excited, too-he believed in his luck. But some part of him always felt like that kid in bed in the dark on Garden Street, listening through the wall as his mother rattled on and on and his old man just lay there, grunting.

As for the Sentimental Gentleman of Swing, Tommy Dorsey drank a good bit backstage at the Circle Theater the night of that final broadcast, and liquor always put a fine edge on his cold Irish anger. When Sinatra cried on his shoulder, Dorsey had seven words for him.

"I hope you fall on your a.s.s," the bandleader said.

At first it seemed that was exactly what was going to happen. After returning from Los Angeles (where Frank had stopped by the NBC radio studios, hat in hand, to ask for a job as staff singer that the network did not vouchsafe to give him), Frank got to spend a lot of time around the new house, helping Nancy paint and paper and fuss over their little girl, and she got to see what kind of good mood that that put him in. Meanwhile, Frank Cooper was working hard to get his client a job, any job-against the opposition of many who felt that a solo singer, even Sinatra, couldn't draw an audience without a big band behind him. put him in. Meanwhile, Frank Cooper was working hard to get his client a job, any job-against the opposition of many who felt that a solo singer, even Sinatra, couldn't draw an audience without a big band behind him.

It's hard to imagine in this age of instant information, but fame in those days was a far more parochial phenomenon than it is now. Frank Sinatra was a name to conjure with among the kids, the jitterbugs, the record-buying big-band fans; but to much of America, where singers were concerned, it was Crosby, period. Sinatra was really just catching on.

His own retrospective a.s.sessment of his situation in the fall of 1942 may have been a little bleaker than was actually the case-he always did like to buff his story a bit. "I was now free," he told Sidney Zion at the Yale Law School talk. "I had no ties with anybody. I didn't even have an agent to represent me. [Frank Cooper was very much alive when Sinatra-who in his later years would also sometimes claim never to have had a voice lesson-made this astounding statement.] I was living in Hasbrouck Heights at the time, and I found out that there was a theater [nearby] where they had vaudeville, and I went around, spoke to the manager, and I said, 'I'd like to play here for a couple of nights, maybe a weekend.' He said okay. So I played there for a week, Tuesday through Sunday. I found out later that each manager or booker from the theaters in New York-the Roxy, the Strand, the Loew's State, the Paramount, the Capitol Theater-sent their scouts over to see what all the noise was about."

In fact, Sinatra had not one but two agents working for him. Frank Cooper now joined forces with a man named Harry Romm-whose not inconsiderable claim to fame was having put together the Three Stooges-to try to browbeat Bob Weitman, the manager of the Paramount, into booking Sinatra. In a cla.s.sic case of How Quickly They Forget, Weitman-who had seen the girls go ape for Frankie in his theater, had seen them camp out for five or six shows, refusing to go home-was skeptically disposed. It was one thing, he thought, when you had the matchless presence of Dorsey, the blazing drums of Buddy Rich, and the heavenly harmonies of the Pied Pipers all together on that gigantic elevator stage. But could bony little Sinatra, all by his lonesome, put four thousand a.s.ses in the seats?

Cooper and Romm finally hit on a clever ploy: they prevailed upon Weitman to attend an early-December Sinatra performance at the Mosque Theatre in Newark. What Weitman didn't realize was that Newark was Sinatra's backyard. If ever Frank owned an audience, this was it. The whole thing was strictly a setup. Years afterward, Weitman recalled sitting and watching in awe as "this skinny kid walks out on the stage. He was not much older than the kids in the seats. He looked like he still had milk on his chin. As soon as they saw him, the kids went crazy. And when he started to sing they stood up and yelled and moaned and carried on until I thought-excuse the expression-his pants had fallen down."

It was December 12, 1942: Sinatra's twenty-seventh birthday. An auspicious omen. Weitman phoned him at home that night. "He said, 'What are you doing New Year's Eve?'" Sinatra recalled. "I said, 'Not a thing. I can't even get booked anywhere.' Weitman said, 'I'd like you to open at the joint,' as he used to call it. He said, 'You've got Benny Goodman's Orchestra and a Crosby picture.' I fell right on my b.u.t.t."

The Crosby picture was Star Spangled Rhythm Star Spangled Rhythm, a patriotic musical starring not only Bing but also Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Ray Milland, Paulette G.o.ddard, and a few dozen other of the studio's stars, all playing themselves. And Benny Goodman was, of course, Benny Goodman: a G.o.dlike bandleader and instrumentalist at least on a par with Dorsey.5 "In those days," Sinatra said, "they called you an 'extra added attraction.' I went to rehearsal at seven-thirty in the morning, and I looked at the marquee, and it said, 'Extra added attraction, Frank Sinatra,' and I said, 'Wow! Wow!'"

Wow was not what Jack Benny (who was emceeing the show) said. Such was the narrowness of Sinatra's renown at that point that the comedian had never heard of him. Benny recalled: was not what Jack Benny (who was emceeing the show) said. Such was the narrowness of Sinatra's renown at that point that the comedian had never heard of him. Benny recalled: I was in New York City doing a radio show, and Bob Weitman...came to me and asked if just before I do my radio show, I could come over to the Paramount for the debut of Frank Sinatra. I said who? He said, "Frank Sinatra, and Benny Goodman's Orchestra is also playing and Benny Goodman will introduce you, and you will introduce Frank Sinatra..." I said, "Well, I'm sorry, but I never heard of him. But, Bob, I'll do this for you and Benny Goodman and Sinatra too if it is any help..."Benny Goodman went on and did his act, and then he says, "Now, ladies and gentlemen, to introduce our honored guest, we have Jack Benny." So I walked out on a little ramp and got a very fine receptio,n you know, I thought it was nice. I certainly didn't think Sinatra would get much of anything 'cause I never heard of him. So, they introduce me and I did two or three jokes and they laughed and then I realized there were a lot of young people out there, probably waiting for Sinatra, so I introduced Frank Sinatra as if he were one of my closest friends-you know, I made a big thing of it and I had to make all of this up, 'cause I didn't know who he was-and then I said, "Well, anyway, ladies and gentlemen, here he is, Frank Sinatra"-and I thought the G.o.dd.a.m.ned building was going to cave in. I never heard such a commotion with people running down to the stage, screaming and nearly knocking me off the ramp. All this for a fellow I never heard of.

Bob Weitman said, "There were about five thousand people in the theater at the time, and all five thousand were of one voice, 'F-R-A-N-K-I-E-E-E-E-E!' The young, the old-as one person-got up and danced in the aisles and jumped on the stage. The loge and the balcony swayed. One of the managers came over to me and said, 'The balcony is rocking-what do we do?'"

Standing on the stage, his back to the audience as he prepared to conduct his band, Benny Goodman had a different reaction as the huge sound burst forth.

"What the f.u.c.k was that?" he said.

Benny Goodman and Frank, Los Angeles, early forties. (photo credit 10.2) (photo credit 10.2)

Act Three

HIGHER AND HIGHER

11.

"Good morning. My name is Frank Sinatra." His first line in the movies, in the 1943 RKO Radio Pictures feature Higher and Higher Higher and Higher. (photo credit 11.1) (photo credit 11.1) EXTRA ADDED ATTRACTION" was indeed how the Paramount first billed him: fourth on the program, beneath Benny Goodman and His Famous Orchestra,1 under a comedy trio called the Radio Rogues and a comedy duo called Moke and Poke, and just above "DON BAKER at the PARAMOUNT ORGAN." Frank Sinatra's name was, however, the only one besides Goodman's in boldface, and in type only slightly smaller. And beneath the name, the slogan: "The Voice That Has Thrilled Millions." under a comedy trio called the Radio Rogues and a comedy duo called Moke and Poke, and just above "DON BAKER at the PARAMOUNT ORGAN." Frank Sinatra's name was, however, the only one besides Goodman's in boldface, and in type only slightly smaller. And beneath the name, the slogan: "The Voice That Has Thrilled Millions."

It was true enough. But the phrase itself sounded like something that would have rolled off the stentorian tongue of some radio announcer of the 1920s or 1930s. And here in January 1943-one of those hinges in time that come along periodically, a moment when everything simply vaults forward- vaults forward-Frank Sinatra, a radically new American product, needed drastic repackaging, and somebody new to do it.

The coiner of the slogan was another of Sinatra's agents at the time, a soon-to-be-forgotten figure named Harry Kilby. The publicist who convinced the powers that be at the Paramount to affix the tired-sounding strapline to the bottom of the marquee was one Milt Rubin, a Times Square hack and the willing slave of the Emperor Winch.e.l.l-Walter, of course. Sinatra had hired Rubin in the fall of 1942, soon after leaving Dorsey, on a tip from the all-powerful columnist, and had quickly come to regret it. The PR man treated Frank like just another act, no more important than anyone else on his C-list roster of ventriloquists, acrobats, and female impersonators. Meanwhile, Rubin hovered around Winch.e.l.l's table at Lindy's, laughing at the great man's jokes and begging for sc.r.a.ps. There were times Sinatra-admittedly a high-maintenance client-couldn't reach his $50-a-week publicist on the telephone. Nancy, who wrote the checks, began ignoring Rubin's bills. This got his attention, though not in a good way: the publicist initiated legal proceedings against his client.

Manie Sacks of Columbia, Sinatra's new rabbi, had the solution: George Evans was Frank's man. The best in the business-the best there ever was.

This was manifestly true. Between Rubin and Evans, there was simply no comparison. A glance into the former's fusty Times Square office would have made it clear: a cluttered couple of rooms behind a frosted-gla.s.s transom door, an old broad in a snood doing her nails at the reception desk while some sweaty guy with a Chihuahua cooled his heels. In George B. Evans's clean and modern Columbus Circle suite, on the other hand, there were three a.s.sistants fielding calls from clients like Mr. Glenn Miller, Mr. Duke Ellington, and Miss Lena Horne.

Evans was forty, in the prime of his life, and he was a dynamo, with a thrusting determined jaw and a ravening look in his piercing dark eyes. Lightly balding, bespectacled (tortoise-sh.e.l.l frames were his trademark), handsome in his way, he dressed well, spoke fast and crisply, came straight to the point. And he had a good opinion of himself, with reason: he lived for his clients, and his clients did well by him. Their joys were his joys; their sorrows were his, too. If they needed solace at 4:00 a.m., he picked up the phone, no questions asked. He was as expert at making trouble go away as he was at whipping up excitement.

In return he was choosy about whom he wanted to represent. Where this Sinatra boy was concerned, Evans was skeptical at first, Manie Sacks's laudatory call notwithstanding. Singers were a dime a dozen, and what was a singer, anyway, without a band? The bands made news; the bands brought the crowds. And the bandleaders were G.o.ds. Glenn, Duke: G.o.d, just the thought of these brilliant, elegant, authoritative men gave Evans chills. In some sense, representing them made him feel he was taking on their qualities.

But a boy singer! This one might even be different from the rest-from what he had heard on records and the radio, Evans was willing to grant that. It was a pleasant voice, nicely expressive. Still, George Evans didn't quite see what all the fuss was about.

Then he went, and he saw. Nick Sevano, Sinatra's Hoboken homeboy and soon-to-be ex-gofer (one too many tantrums about starch in the shirts; life was too short-except that Sevano would spend the rest of his very long life trading, like so many others, on his acquaintance with the singer), met the publicist in the Paramount lobby and whisked him down the aisle in the middle of the 2:30 show. Evans, not easily impressed, gaped at what he saw.

Actually, the sound and smell were what hit him at first. The place was absolutely packed with hysterical teenage girls, almost five thousand of them, fire laws be d.a.m.ned (a few hundred slipped into the right hands earned Bob Weitman a lot of extra money). They were jamming the seats, the aisles, the balcony-all but hanging from the rafters. And hanging raptly on the words to the song the starved-looking kid in the spotlight at center stage was singing- Be careful, it's my heart...

and going nuts when he hit that last word: It's not my watch you're holding, it's my he-art.

The (by now very practiced) catch in his voice, the tousled spit curl on his forehead (no Dorsey anymore to order him to comb it), the help-me look in his bright blue eyes (always, pointedly, laser focused on one girl or another in the audience)-it all set them off like dynamite. The air in the great auditorium was vibrating, both with earsplitting screams (FRANKIEEE!!! FRANKIEEE!!! FRANKIEEE!!!) and with the heat and musk of female l.u.s.t. Evans could smell perfumes, BO, the faint acrid tang of urine (the girls would come for the first show at 9:15 a.m. and stay for show after show, determined never to relinquish a precious seat even if it meant soaking it), and something else. They were like a great herd of female beasts, he thought with wonderment, all in heat at once...

As Evans hovered close to the stage, openmouthed (Sevano just behind him, grinning knowingly), a girl in an aisle seat stood and tossed a single rose, its long stem wrapped in protective paper, up to the singer. The flower hung for a second in the whirling beam of the spotlight-and then, with a graceful movement, Sinatra caught it, smiled at her, and closed his eyes as he sniffed the blossom, sending the whole theater into yet another paroxysm. The publicist's ears picked out one sound above the din: a low moan, emanating from a lanky black-haired girl standing next to the rose thrower. It was a sound he had heard before-only in very different, much more private, circ.u.mstances.

Then and there George Evans decided he would represent Frank Sinatra.

He had been in the business for ten years; he had represented Russ Columbo and Rudy Vallee at a time when such sappy crooners could capture the hearts of America's females-and when hearts were the only part of the female anatomy in play. Now the game had clearly advanced, and Sinatra was clearly the man responsible.

Evans knew at once he could take the game still further.

He stuck around for three more shows, taking careful note of what he saw and felt, his mind racing at the possibilities. This was something the publicist had never seen the likes of before. It was a great whirlwind, and he was being offered carte blanche to step in and harness it. But how?

He noticed-because each audience, after all, is a different animal-that not every show was successfully hysterical. Sometimes there were odd lulls in the tumult; sometimes the crowd got in its own way (and the singer's), just screaming, creating a ma.s.sive wall of sound, preventing Sinatra from doing what he did best: singing. Pandemonium was all well and good if it served the purpose at hand-namely, making this boy a star like no other before him.

But Evans saw that Sinatra's visual appeal, while unique, was limited. What got to the girls was that voice-specifically, the unique blend of that personality and that voice. Other singers were better to look at. Others had winning personalities and terrific voices. But no one, absolutely no one, got his personality into into the voice like this kid. He sold a song, and told a song, like n.o.body else. Especially, of course, if the song was a ballad. He yearned in front of thousands of females, making every girl in the place want to mother him or screw him-Sinatra had each and every one of them in a dither about which. But he had to be heard. the voice like this kid. He sold a song, and told a song, like n.o.body else. Especially, of course, if the song was a ballad. He yearned in front of thousands of females, making every girl in the place want to mother him or screw him-Sinatra had each and every one of them in a dither about which. But he had to be heard.

Then George B. Evans had his first great idea. "The Voice That Has Thrilled Millions"-the creakiness, the s.e.xlessness s.e.xlessness, of that G.o.dd.a.m.n slogan made him cringe every time he thought of it. He could do so much better. What was it about Frankie Sinatra that got those girls' juices flowing? Evans closed his eyes and thought about what set them off. He saw those blue eyes focusing on one girl, then another; and then he heard it: When, for just a half second, Sinatra stopped in the middle of a word, that was when the frenzy crescendoed. That was it! It was simple, really; all great human truths are. Evans didn't have to add a thing. All he had to do was subtract.

Frank was just...the Voice.

Simple. Instantly recognizable. You didn't have to ask whose. Accept no subst.i.tutes. This was it, now and for all time.

Evans lit a cigar; in the sweet cloud of blue smoke came the second idea. He would never admit to what inspired it. Like all Americans, he had listened with fascination to radio broadcasts of the era's great demagogues, orators who had a hypnotic effect on crowds: Roosevelt, Churchill, the evangelists Aimee Semple McPherson and Father Coughlin. But Evans was especially riveted by the n.a.z.i broadcasts of Hitler whipping the German ma.s.ses into a frenzy. The rallies were beautifully ch.o.r.eographed, the ma.s.s chanting swelled and fell precisely on cue. The dictator was never drowned out. Someone was behind this, Evans knew: someone very skillful.

George would have to be just as skillful in working his new client.

Evans had read how farmers would pay a pilot to go up and scatter certain chemicals on clouds to end a drought-seeding the clouds, they called it. Well, if clouds could be seeded, why not crowds? Rumor had it that Milt Rubin had handed out half-dollars in the Paramount lobby to girls who promised to make a racket during Sinatra's shows. It was the right idea, Evans felt, but unscientific in approach. In later years he would offer to donate $1,000 (he subsequently raised it to $5,000) to the favorite charity of anyone able to prove that "a kid was given a ticket, a pa.s.s, a gift, or a gratuity of any kind in any shape or manner at all to go in [to a Sinatra show] and screech." But Evans then went on to admit to E. J. Kahn Jr. that "certain things were done. It would be as wrong for me to divulge them as it would be for a doctor to discuss his work."

It was a self-aggrandizing comparison, but George Evans was in the aggrandizing business, and he was head and shoulders above his compet.i.tion. "George was a genius genius," said Jerry Lewis, who, along with his partner, Dean Martin, was represented by Evans in the late 1940s. "He would audition girls for how loud they could scream! Then he would give each of them a five-dollar bill-no dirty money, just clean new bills; I learned that from him. The agreement was that they had to stay at least five shows. Then he spread them through the Paramount-seven sections. Evans would read the scores scores of the songs to see where the screaming should come in-the girls could only scream on the high, loud parts, never when it was low and s.e.xy." of the songs to see where the screaming should come in-the girls could only scream on the high, loud parts, never when it was low and s.e.xy."

The publicist would even take groups of girls to the bas.e.m.e.nt to rehea.r.s.e them, giving them precise cues when to yell "Oh, Frankie! Oh, Frankie!"-not just during the loud parts, but whenever Sinatra let his voice catch. Evans also coached the singer. Picking up on Sinatra's intimate relationship with the microphone, Evans told him: Imagine that mike on its stand is a beautiful broad. Caress it. Make love to it. Hold on to it for dear life.

Sinatra looked impressed: the guy was good. Sanicola and Sevano bobbed their heads eagerly.

The publicist even trained both the singer and his claques in the art of call-and-response. When Sinatra sang "(I Got a Woman Crazy for Me) She's Funny That Way," with the lyric "I'm not much to look at, nothin' to see," Evans coached one of the girls to yell "Oh, Frankie, yes, you are!" On "Embraceable You," Evans told Frank to spread his arms beckoningly on the words "Come to papa, come to papa, do." The girls would then scream, "Oh, Daddy!" After which, Frank would murmur into the mike, "Gee, that's a lot of kids for one fellow." Evans trained some of the girls to faint in the aisles, others to moan loudly in unison. He hired an ambulance to park outside the theater and issued the ushers bottles of ammonia "in case a patron feels like swooning."

In the first two weeks of 1943, the hysteria at the Paramount built. At one show, thirty girls keeled over; only some of them had been prepped to do so. The crowds outside the theater were equally worked up. Times Square had become a twenty-four-hour Sinatra-thon. Wartime swing shifts abetted the overnight, around-the-block ticket lines for the 8:45 a.m. shows. The girls pushed and shoved, endangering each other and everything in sight. "I saw fans run under the horses of mounted policemen," recalled Sinatra's a.s.sistant road manager Richie Lisella. "I saw them turn over a car." Cordons of cops did their best to contain the hysteria. And George Evans did his best to fan it.

The publicist coined a whole new lingo, 1940s glib and gumsnappingly brash, to describe the phenomenon he was guiding. Winch.e.l.l, Earl Wilson, and the other columnists could now refer to the singer as "Swoonatra," and to his bobby-soxed idolaters as "Sinatratics." (Which was easier to read than to say.) The anguished pleasure they suffered in his presence was "Sinatrauma"; the specific physical reaction Dr. Evans had noted in one moaning female fan was, unsubtly enough, a "Sinatraism." ("Sinatrasm" might have been a little too on the money.) George Evans was brilliant at leveraging publicity. No outlet was too insignificant-although it helped, in the case of high-school newspaper editors, if you could get a couple dozen of them in a room together to interview the star. Evans worked overtime planting Sinatra items-some of them lightly factual, most heavily laced with fancy-in the gossip columns and the news. Evans told reporters: Over a thousand Sinatra fan clubs have sprung up in the U.S.A.! (Who was counting? A thousand was a nice round number.) You had, among many, many others, your Sighing Society of Sinatra Swooners, your Slaves of Sinatra, your Flatbush Girls Who Would Lay Down Their Lives for Frank Sinatra Fan Club. And let us not forget that glorious (and likely fict.i.tious) gaggle of middle-aged aficionadas, the Frank Sinatra Fan and Mahjong Club.

Publicists have sown such corn since the Theodore Roosevelt administration, but this was a bolder variety, and the soil in which it took root was particularly fertile. The war was raging on two fronts, and America was hungry for upbeat stories. And it's always easier to make up good news than find it, and George Evans was delighted to oblige.