Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1941)

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I enclose ten cents for postage and handling. -^C Also send my Color Harmony Make-Up Chart and Illustrated BooI;,"The New Art or Make-Up'. . .FREE. 25-4-64 Hollywood, California COMPLEX oir> EYES HAIR Very Light ...D ...D Green .... a Hazel D Grown , . . O Black . . . . D BLONDE Lighl.D Oork.Q 6B0WNETTE Lighl.D Oark.D BRUNETTE Lighl.D Oark.D REDHEAD Light. 0 Oark.D .;. .' . ...„...,G Freckled . Olive ...D . LJ . O LASHESluH Light D Dark o SKIN 0 ., ij m.-. DryO t,:,io AGE bands around the New Jersey countryside and hanging around phonograph shops. His school seat was seldom warm. The High School principal was always calling to tell Frank's father how very absent from school his son was. Frank had told Nancy all this. "My Dad raised the devil," Frank had explained to her, "and I guess I was pretty useless. But, you see, I wasn't really wasting time. Maybe I should have been in school instead of hanging around band rehearsals, but that was the only way I could learn anything about music." By the time Frank met Nancy at the beach, his family had just about decided he would never amount to anything. He had left school to sing with small bands that paid him practically nothing. He had been fired from a job as copy boy on a Jersey City paper. He had gone off on tour with a Major Bowes unit and come home penniless. He had tried to explain to them how valuable the experience had been, how it had given him poise and confidence singing before theatre audiences. The family sighed and didn't understand. Little by little, through that summer in Long Branch, Frank had told Nancy all these things and she seemed to be the only person who understood him. Now, he had to make good. He had to find a way to sing somewhere. Nancy and Frank sat up most of that last night, planning, dreaming, scheming to find a way they could eventually have a life together. Finally, they worked out a plan. Nancy would go back to her job. Frank would go over to New York City every day and begin haunting the small radio stations. THIS was the plan and Frank stuck to it. He waited hour after hour for appointments. He offered to sing for anything. Anything, to small radio station owners, almost always means nothing. So Frank sang for nothing. Then, he began getting programs. He sang on every small station that would have him. His first year in New York, he often had as many as eighteen programs a week. All this work earned him just enough for the carfare back and forth to New Jersey. Sometimes, it would be too discouraging. "I don't even know whether anybody listens to my programs, Nancy," he would say. "You wait," Nancy would say. "Some day, some one will hear you and give you a break. You can't say nobody listens to you," she added with a smile. "Why, some days I sneak out of the office to listen. You just keep plugging." And Frank did. In those days, he sang everything that was written. To pick up experience, after a hard day at the New York studios, he would sing with small bands over in Jersey. For a long time, he held down a solo spot at the Rustic Cabin, a small New Jersey place. Every night when he got through with work, he and Nancy would get together and talk about the way he sang and the way other singers sang. Whenever she could, Nancy listened to him on the radio. Frank believed then, and still does, that the words of a song are much more important than the melody — that in order to put over a song, you have to believe the words you are singing. He worked hard to give every song he did a new interpretation. He worked consciously and deliberately for a style all his own. Sometimes, it seemed as though all the heart and warmth he put into his lyrics was being wasted. His audience on the local stations was naturally small. But Nancy kept him going. She kept telling him how much better he was getting every day. They kept planning for that home of their own, even though it looked very far away. It wasn't so far away, though. Frank was getting a reputation, even if he didn't know it. Band leaders were beginning to notice him. In Benny Goodman's band there was a trumpet player named Harry James, who thought Frank was swell. "There's a kid who can make lyrics mean something," Harry would tell the other Goodman men. "He makes the words of a song come alive. If I ever get a band of my own, I'm going to hire him." Those words, had Harry James written or said them to Frank then, would have meant everything in the world. But he didn't. Another year went by, a year of only pennies in the pocket and Nancy's faith. Day after day, Frank trudged back and forth from New Jersey to New York. But 1939 came along and Harry James decided the time was ripe for him to have a band of his own. One day, Frank came out of a small New York station's studio to find a tall, thin young man with a grin on his face standing there. "Howya," the tall, thin fellow said. "I'm Harry James. I've been listening to you for a couple of years. How'd you like to sing with my band?" Frank just stood there for a minute. Then he grabbed Harry's hand and said, "When do I start?" "Right away," Harry said. Frank rushed to the nearest telephone and called Nancy to tell her the wonderful news. "Now we can get married, honey," he said. That night, there was another all night session of making plans. They could see the future now. But there wasn't time to get married because Frank had to go right out on the road with Harry's band. The band clicked immediately. Nancy and Frank wrote letters every day and when Frank came back they were married in New Jersey, not far from the little apartment they had always wanted. That same week, Harry James and Band opened at the New York Paramount. After closing at the Paramount, Frank and Nancy got that little apartment in New Jersey. It wasn't big, or luxurious. Just an average, nicely furnished little place that all out of work kids in love dream about. Other bands began to bid for Frank, but he stuck to Harry for a year. Then Harry's band, on tour again, arrived in Chicago at the same time as Tommy Dorsey's. Jack Leonard, Tommy's ace singer, was leaving. Tommy heard Frank one night at the Palmer House and decided he had to It was announced last month that "PORTIA FACES LIFE" would appear in this issue. It will appear, instead, in a forthcoming issue of RADIO MIRROR. 56 RADIO AND TELEVISION MIRROR