Radio-TV mirror (July-Dec 1952)

Without a protest, I got my wraps and followed him, asking myself as I did so, why I was so pliant, what gave this young man his sense of power, of sureness. I learned, as bit by bit I pieced together the Torme story, that the sureness, the sense of power, constitute Mel's most outstanding characteristic. He sets an objective, and it doesn't matter how many obstacles are in his way; Mel overcomes them and reaches it. It has been that way since he was a tiny child, I found, as the story unfolded. I heard parts of it that night from Mel as we stopped at a drive-in for hamburgers, and more of it the next evening when I went with him to the hot-rod races where he had a car entered. I heard it, too, from his parents when we spent evenings at his home, drinking Cokes and listening to his huge collection of records. Mel was only four when he got his first professional engagement singing with the Coon Saunders band at the Blackhawk Restaurant. Not much later, during the foamy days of Chicago daytime drama, he became a radio actor. He had to stand on a box to reach the microphone, but he read his lines like a veteran. Already, young Mel was insisting he didn't want to be "good for his age," he just wanted to be good. He was learning, too, this strangely serious small boy, to play drums and to set music down on paper. He wrote the first of the 250 original melodies which he still has packed away in a trunk, and he also began making orchestral arrangements of the compositions of others. Bands bought them, bought them not because they were turned out by an appealing boy, but because they were good arrangements. Mel felt grown up and pleased with himself. Mel, in telling it to me, said wryly, "At thirteen I thought I was grown up for sure. Harry James came to town, looked me over, and concluded I was a bargain. I was arranger, singer, drummer. He hired me, and practically on fire I went back to Hyde Park High School to say goodbye. I told all my friends and some who turned out to be not quite so friendly. Oh, it was a great thing, they held farewell parties, and everything. "Then James checked with his attorneys," he went on. "In twenty-three of the twenty-four states of the proposed tour, there were laws which would have required the band to carry a tutor for me. James said he was sorry, but I'd have to wait a while. "No one at school believed me. They thought I had just made up the part about the job, that I had never been hired at all. You know the way kids can be. I'd come into a drugstore after school and they'd all stand up, bow from the waist, and yell, 'Here comes Harry James's exdrummer.' There was only one friend who stood by me, and that was John Poister. "But that wasn't the worst," Mel added. "There was a girl, a girl who wasn't impressed. Call it a school-kid crush if you want to, but to me it was serious. I mourned and moaned, and finally I packed all my grief into a song. I wrote 'Lament to Love.' Harry James recorded it, and it stayed at the top of the Hit Parade for a month." Success of his tune restored Mel's prestige so much that when Mel and John Poister wrote a musical comedy and his high school staged it, Mel had the lead; he and John produced and directed. The school made enough money to buy an honor plaque on which were listed the students in service. Next step, for Mel, was a tour with Chico Marx's band. They reached Hollywood, and Mel recognized that's where he wanted to be. Only in Hollywood could he find an outlet for his varied talents as a singer, actor, song writer, arranger, drummer, producer and director. His mother, father and sister joined him, which gave his parents a chance to insist that he take time out to finish high school. Hollywood put him to work. As a drummer, he got bit parts in Frank Sinatra's "Higher and Higher" and in Cary Grant's "Night and Day." He also achieved stardom, junior grade, as leading man in the Gloria Jean epics. He kept his hold in music by organizing a quintet known as the Meltones. When his eighteenth birthday rolled around, the Army took over Mel's booking. Although his face was unlined, his stomach had spent fourteen years in show business, and Mel was on a crackers-andmilk diet. After two months, mess sergeants and medics decided he wasn't tough enough for the Army and sent him home. "I wish they could have seen how I worked," Mel said. "Compared to what I did, Army life was a vacation." When he listed his activities, I could understand what he meant. His time was split up between motion pictures, radio, recordings, and personal appearances. "You should have seen some of the spots I've played," said Mel. "Carlos Gastel, my manager, decided to toughen me up by making me face live audiences. My first really big booking was at the Copacabana in New York." I had heard that story. People in show business still talk about it. The crowd at the Copa liked sophisticated entertainment. They didn't know what to make of this slender young man who crooned into the mike in a style all his own. Mel Torme didn't mean a thing to them. Few had / can save a pretty penny With a clever touch or two— When I add a frisky feather Last year's bonnet looks brand new! And when it comes to undies I'm a budget-stretching star! I buy panties made of Spun-lo . . . They're the thriftiest by far! Spun-lo Undies are * simple to stids ir quick to dry if extra long-wearing it really inexpensive OJUHUM took ho\j INDUSTRIAL RAYON CORPORATION, Cleveland, Ohio Producers of continuous process rayon yarns and ®Tyrm Cord for tires 83