We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
A kiss for Frankie from his wife, lovely Nan Grey, a stage and film actress. shows on TV, a file case filled with night club bookings —and contracts to appear in five motion pictures. The Godfrey job came as a big surprise to Frankie. “I knew the line was out,” he says, “But I didn’t think I had a chance. It’s one of the biggest things that ever happened to me.” Things weren’t nearly so warm for Frankie nine short years ago. In the spring of 1946, he was an unemployed war-plant machinist and part-time singing waiter looking for a job in Hollywood. For weeks he haunted the studios, hotels, night clubs and ma¬ chine shops. But times were tight. There just wasn’t any work for him. Frankie, who is customarily a hearty, high-spirited fellow, began to get de¬ pressed. What he needed, he decided, was a night on the town. So he lined his pockets with his last $40, draped a starlet over his arm and took off for the Brown Derby. En route, he was held up by a couple of thugs, who took away his $40. For some reason this incident pepped Frankie up. “I figured my luck just couldn’t get any worse,” he says, “and that made me feel a lot better.” In this frame of mind he walked into Billy Berg’s Vine Street bistro and talked himself into a job as a singer. That night he sang “Old Rock¬ in’ Chair,” to the accompaniment of enthusiastic applause from a solitary stranger seated back near the kitchen. It was Hoagy Carmichael. Carmichael, it appeared, had ap¬ plauded so loudly that Berg figured Frankie must be good—and signed him up for an extra two weeks. IVeither Frankie nor Hoagy knew it that night, but Laine was already on his way. A Uttle while later, he re¬ corded “That’s My Desire” for $50— and a little while after that, Frankie and “Desire” were wearing out juke boxes coast to coast. Almost overnight he was the teen-agers’ idol. Those teen-agers are older now, but they’re still loyal. Frankie has a bunth of new fans, of course. A whole generation of teeners has emerged; and occasionally he even makes a conquest in the mid- dle-aged-and-over group. All in all, Frankie has turned out 30 million records, a production total surpassed only by Bing Crosby. And, like Bing, he has had his share of high honors. Last year, for instance, he gave a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II. “They didn’t even tell me the Queen was gonna be in the house until a couple of hours before I was supposed to go on,” he says. “Man! I went right out and changed my shirt.” It all began for Frankie back on March 30, 1913, when a baby was born to Mr. and Mrs. John Lo Vecchio in Chicago. John, who was a barber, wanted the baby to grow up to be a druggist. But soon it developed that little Frankie could sing. He sang in the choir of the Immacu¬ late Conception Church, in the chorus at Lane Technical High School, in his father’s barber shop quartets and. 14