TV Radio Mirror (Jul - Dec 1956)

Bachelor Serenade 70 (Continued from page 48) installation includes his hi-fi radio-phono equipment, with record changer and record storage compartments; a tape recorder, with storage room below for plenty of tapes; cabinets built over the piano, with room for quantities pf sheet music; his television set, and a motion-picture projector and necessary equipment. "Really somethin', isn't it?" Frank smiled. "Especially when you realize that I put in all this stuff myself, thanks to the Kimball design for the music wall — and the help of a couple of strong arms just to lift in the heavier pieces. Imagine me, following the blueprint and putting in the uprights, and then setting in the cabinets and turning the screws and standing back to admire my handiwork! You should pardon my pride — but, after all I'm a performer and all this was new to me." It's obvious that it was fun for him to put in, and it's fun to use. But, for Frank, it has a very practical side. It's here, in this room, that he does his practice work, recording his songs and playing them back, listening critically. Looking at some movies of the night-club act he has been doing all over the country during this past year, including a month recently at the Desert Inn, in Las Vegas. Correcting his own faults, figuring out ways to make the act stronger and better. Listening to the playbacks of his words and his songs, constantly working for improvement in everything he does. It's an interesting insight into the work a top performer must do to remain a top performer — and Frank is wise enough in the ways of show business to need no reminder of that. For relaxation, he leans back in an easy chair and listens to symphonies and orchestral suites, especially some of the modern ones — but, oddly enough, few vocals: "I hear so much vocal music as part of my work that it seems more restful to turn to instrumentals at home. Actually, I love all kinds of music and have started a good collection. Sometimes, as I listen, I wonder what my father would have thought of all this marvelous electronic equipment, with everything so compact and streamlined, and beautiful besides." Tied in with his childhood memories too, is undoubtedly the little collection of Madonnas, a few in the music room, the rest in the living room. There's a lovely carved one over the fireplace and, near it, an antique polychrome Madonna and Child. On shelves in the music room are some fine porcelains, and a tiny, crudely sculptured mother and child which is said to date back to about 1500 B.C. Besides these, there are little French figurines, some souvenirs of trips Frank has taken, and a pair of Dutch wooden sabots which were carved out especially for him, one Wednesday night on the Godfrey television program, by an artist who worked at the side of the stage as the performance went on. It had taken him only five or ten minutes to chisel out the shoes and burn Frank's name into the sides and decorate them with a bit of color, and Frank thinks very highly of them and of the skill that produced them. Furnishing the place, bachelor style, seems to have been fun for Frank. A huge antique barometer was found in a shop in Florida when the Godfrey gang broadcast from Miami Beach last winter. Frank brought his new treasure back with him in the plane, and a stewardess suggested he might want to put his strange-looking package in the baggage compartment. "It's fragile," Frank said. "I'd better keep it at my seat. It's a thermometer, you know." She looked puzzled, and he wondered why. Later, when he realized he had said "thermometer" when he meant "barometer," he called her over. "You must have thought a thing that big," he grinned, "was designed to take the temperature of a giraffe with a very high fever!" The whole apartment is stunningly masculine. Even the rows of plants on the window sills are the big, sturdy varieties which would be a man's choice. The entrance foyer and living-room walls are gray-green, and the carpeting is gray. Two big gray sofas are complemented by red brocade chairs. There is a handsome Chinese cabinet in black and gold lacquer, a large marble-top coffee table, a gleaming silver tea and coffee service. Bookshelves give a bright note with their paper covers and light bindings. Drapes are a soft gray, the lamps black and gold and red. Even the pictures are characteristically masculine— some Dufys, matted in dark green and framed in white, scenes of the races at Ascot and Epsom Downs. "All I have left of my 'racing days' are these pictures, my memories of owning race horses and of playing polo, and a bagful of losing tickets from the tracks," he said, and you gather he doesn't sigh for the old days. His bedroom is furnished in light woods for the wide, high chest, the dresser, the bed and bed tables. The walls are a light cocoa color, drapes and bedspreads chartreuse, the rug a deeper green, and the lamps green and chartreuse. One lamp base, next to his bed, is a radio -clock combination, specially made, which wakes him up to music in the morning, turns off his favorite program automatically at night, and includes that boon to a bachelor, a place to plug in his morning coffee for a quick, steaming pick-up before he gets out of bed. He used to go overboard on clothes, when he was a young fellow making a big success on radio with Jack Benny. "You learn, as you get older," he smiled. "Now I keep up my wardrobe by replacing the things that wear out, but I know it's foolish to have too many clothes at a time. Every time we take the Godfrey shows to Miami or I do a night-club appearance in a resort town, I'm a sucker for all the sports things I see in the shops. Then I come home, pack them away, take them out once in a while to brush them off and chase the moths out, and pack them back again. "In New York," he added, "I wear conservative business clothes, mostly blue Features in Full Color DAVE GARROWAY "Wedding for Today" • JEAN McBRIDE of "Love Of Life" • THE MERRY MODERNAIRES of Bob Crosby's Show • JEANNE CAGNEY of "Queen For A Day" • all in the AUGUST issue of TV RADIO MIRROR at your newsstand July 5 or gray, with white or blue shirts — more blue ones since I'm on television, because they photograph better. Striped ties with solid color shirts, solid ties with patterned shirts. I'm a pushover for yellow, anything with yellow in it — but, unfortunately, I can't wear yellow suits! Just sports shirts. I like slacks and loose shirts around the house, own a couple of sports jackets and a few sweaters. That's about it." He would love to go out more at night and dance and sit around the clubs, but doesn't dare stay up too late. "After midnight, I'd be liable to turn into a pumpkin, at my age," he says. (His age, midway between fifty and fifty-five, hardly shows and he's still a trim five-feet-eight.) When Frank entertains at home, it's for close friends: "They know where things are kept, they can find the kitchen and the refrigerator, and they usually help themselves— if I don't get around to doing it." When properly persuaded, on special occasions, he's been known to cook a tasty lasagna and serve it to guests in the little dining room off the foyer. But, mostly, his entertaining is limited to special occasions .and old friends. "My hobbies are now enclosed by the four walls of the music room," he says. "I used to play golf a lot, but that takes all day, getting to wherever you are going to play and getting back again, along the crowded highways surrounding a city like New York. Even weekends, I'm apt to have a club date." His night-club act includes a cute girl named Sally Singer. Sally pretends to be a swooning bobby-soxer who interrupts Frank's songs by asking for an autograph. So well do they carry this off that girls often come up from the audience to follow suit, or to save him from Sally! "They're wonderful," he says. And how come, if they're so wonderful, he's still a bachelor? How come the apartment is strictly a masculine background? "My sisters try to give the place a feminine touch sometimes," he smiles. "I have two sisters who sometimes come in when I'm away and re-arrange all the furniture, with nice little touches here and there. It's just fine, except that I put everything back the way it was, handy for me, and comfortable. They don't mind, they just keep trying. I don't mind, I just keep putting things back the way they were. I really appreciate their interest — and now it's become a kind of little game we play. "Marriage would be fine," he adds, more seriously, "if I could find real companionship with someone who knows what it means to be in this rather crazy business I'm in. Someone who would understand about the traveling, the time that has to be given to constant practice and rehearsals. Someone mature enough to know these things without constant explanation. "I'm always on the go, these days. There are the night-club engagements, the personal appearances, the dozens of demands on a performer's time. There is all the preparation for the Godfrey shows. Arthur has been great to me, and I want to keep on giving my best. Now there's a new business I'm getting into, besides — a record company, in association with a music publishing company. You'll be hearing more about that soon. This means even less leisure time than before. . . . Anyhow, who would want to marry a busy guy like me who's already in love with a piano, a hi-fi, a tape recorder and movie projector, and a record collection?" So says Frank Parker. He'd be surprised how many feminine hearts would find that a perfect outline of a lifetime serenade!