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Biographies of Paramount Players and Directors (1936)

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41. FRANK FOREST (Paramount Player) Frank Forest, young American opera tenor recently signed by paramount, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. His father is Smil Hayek, born in Hungary, and mother was Mary Binde, native of Rochester, New York. There are four sons in the family. The name Hayek, in Hungarian, means forest, so the name used by the screen and stage artist is merely translation into English. Forest began the study of music at ?, taking piano at the time, fhofl he was 10, his teacher found that the boy had a remarkably fine soprano voice, and voice training began. At 12, Forest was singing professionally as boy soloist with a church choir. He continued the study of voice all during his school days and during the summer in the first of his college years joined a group of singers and entertainers Inown as the Metropolitan Singing party. The following year Forest* s father guit his work in St. Paul and bought acreage in an apple orchard development in Oregon. Because the market for apples was not developed to keep pace with their production in that fertile region, the Hayek family investment was lost. Frank, then 17, opened a music studio in Stevensville, Oregon, and taught piano and voice to add to the family funds. In the Spring, United States entered the war and Forest sought to enlist, but was refused because of his youth. After the war, Frank v/ent to New York, determined to continue his study of music. To finance this, ho joined government service in the post-war Camp Community work as a song leader. As one of the first in this rather unique field, he took advantage of the times, wrote a book on the subject, and later joinod the faculty of Hunter collogo, which had announced a course in Community singing. His voice teachers Long had urged him to forego this type of work, pointing out that he was ruining himself as a singer because of the unnatural strain, so he then found employment as a salesman with a company manufacturing