Tony Bennett Conquers the Early 1950s

The name “Robert Q. Lewis” won’t come to mind when you think of someone who created icons in show business.

But you can give him a small amount of credit for the career of one Tony Bennett, one of the great singers of the 20th Century.

Bennett’s career went back long before Lady Gaga and San Francisco. Dorothy Kilgallen wrote a bit about him in her “Voice of Broadway” column on March 24, 1950.

A lad named Tony Bennett is the latest show business Cinderella. A commercial artist from Astoria, he appeared as “Joe Bari” on the Robert Q. Lewis TV show last week, and was seen by Bob Hope, who had a video set in his dressing room at the Paramount [Theatre in New York].
Hope called the studio, invited the young performer to do a couple of songs in his 10 o’clock show that night, and renamed him Tony Bennett when he introduced him to the audience. Tony stopped the show, did five encores, and signed to accompany Bob on his current personal appearance tour—at the rate of $1,500 a week. He is just 22, and seems destined to skyrocket from here on in.

By coincidence, Bennett was the mystery guest on What’s My Line? on Oct. 18, 1964. Dorothy and the rest of the panel didn’t guess him (Robert Q was not on that week).

Things happened pretty quickly for him. By early April 1950, Columbia Records had signed him, and he had been inked to perform in two places on the CBS schedule with Rosemary Clooney—on the 15-minute radio show, Stepping Out, and on TV on the game show Songs For Sale, hosted by Jan Murray. He was replaced on the latter by Richard Hayes. On the former, Variety’s critic decided “Bennett has a slightly metallic tenor, and sings with more vim than style, with too many open tones. But his style is engaging and quite satisfactory for such numbers as ‘I Can’t Give You Anything’ and ‘I Wanna Be Loved.’

This wire service column of Aug. 31, 1950 profiled Bennett to date:

RECORD RENDEZVOUS
By OWEN CALLIN
International News Service Record Critic
HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 31 (INS)—We have had several requests from readers around the country to tell them something about Columbia's new singer, Tony Bennett. Seems as if the new baritone is creating something of a sensation in some quarters so here is what we know about him, lads and lassies:
There isn't much spectacular about Tony's rise. Six years ago when he was a 17-year-old student in commercial art work in New York he decided that singing was to be his life's work. So he began canvassing local night clubs for a chance to audition. Finally one of the owners relented and Tony caught on with his unique style of delivery.
After a round of niteries in New York and New Jersey he joined the armed forces to fight in World War II. He transferred to special services at the end of hostilities and sang with touring GI bands. After he returned to New York he began playing the bigger niteries and was becoming known to radio and TV audiences.
Bob Hope heard him on "The Show Goes On," a TV program starring Robert Q. Lewis, and was so impressed he invited him to be a guest artist on his Paramount Theater show. Scheduled to do two numbers, Tony stopped the show and had to do five. Hope took him on tour and Columbia signed him to a singing contract. . . and there you are, fans.

Following the path of Rudy Vallee and Frank Sinatra (with Johnny Ray and the Beatles to come), the bobby-sox brigade latched onto Bennett. Newsweek referred to it at the end of a feature story in its October 1951 edition.

Now 25, Bennett is getting the full treatment, complete with fan demonstrations reminiscent of the early swooning Sinatra days—to which he responds with enthusiasm, and in the fervor of his delivery sometimes even unknots his tie (see cut). While making personal appearances recently in Brooklyn, he was mobbed by some 2,000 eager female fans, and at his opening at the Paramount last week, the first 500 girls to appear got red roses, presented by Tony himself. And handkerchiefs in his breast pocket now carry the message “Borrowed From Tony Bennett.” If they are going to be consistently swiped, better that they provide a tangible reminder of their owner.

The same month, the Associated Press examined the Bennett phenomenon.

Teen-Agers Have New Crooner In Queens-Born Tony Bennett
By ADELAIDE KERR
NEW YORK, Oct. 13. (AP)—The teen-agers have a new crooner crush—Tony Bennett—who is new in more ways than one.
He came up almost unheralded this year, when his records “Because Of You” and “Cold Cold Heart” made a nation-wide jump to the top of the best-seller list.
Eighteen months ago Tony was singing for $75 a week in a Greenwich Village night club— not even a name to the teenagers who buy 75 per cent of the “pop” records. He had made a phonograph record or two and they sold pretty well—but no stardust settled on him.
Then, in September his records zoomed to the two top spots in the billboard popularity poll. He headlined at the Paramount Theater to the tune of $3500 a week. His personal appearance at a Brooklyn department store brought the bobby soxers out in droves.
What happened?
Not Handsome Anymore
People, whose bread and butter depends on their guessing right on this kind of thing, tell you Tony not only has the voice, but he also has the look. It’s a new look—typical of a new trend in crooners: the hero isn’t handsome any more.
This is not to say that Tony is hard on the eyes. Far from it. He has dark, wavy hair: green eyes, a wide smile and a compact virile body, but he’s no six-foot Adonis. He looks more like the boy next door. He acts that way, too. No fuss. He’s no clotheshorse, either. Some one has to keep a close eye on his clothes. Even when they get him all fixed up, he still just looks like the boy next door.
Not all Tony’s fans are bobby soxers. Boys like him, too—and among the fans who beat their palms when he sang at the Paramount were many with silver in their hair.
When Tony sings, the listener—especially if he is a teen-ager—lets go all the stinging problems that plagued him like mosquitoes and sinks into a rosy cloud. His girl may be mad at his math lesson staring him in the face, his father roaring up the stairs. All these are as nothing. The room is filled with throbbing, pulsating, palpitating rhythms, the voice now swooping to purple pathos, now soaring clear and strong.
Just An Individual
Tony has his own explanation of his rise to success. "I learned In my army days how much people long for love,” he says. “And that’s what I try to give out. That—and the impression that I’m just an individual like them.”
His mother tells you Tony had singing on his mind from the time he was a tyke. Once she took him to hear Al Jolson and On the way home they stopped it her sister’s house. The two women had been chatting awhile, when a loud silence warned them Tony was busy somewhere out of sight. They found him in his aunt’s bedroom, perched in front of the dressing table before an empty powder box, coated with powder from head to foot.

“I’m Al Jolson," he called his mother, and burst into song.
Between that day and this lay a long, hard stony road. Tony was born Anthony Dominick Benedetto, son of Mr. and Mrs. John Benedetto in Long Island City. His father died when he was small and his mother shouldered the job of supporting her three children by working as a dressmaker in a factory. Tony attended the high school of industrial arts In Manhattan with the idea of becoming a commercial artist. But he still loved to sing, and while he was in school, he sang in some small nightclubs.
War Veteran
“I worked also as a press association copy boy,” he says. “All day long I ran around with papers.”
Tony served as GI during World War II, sang in some army camps, made a hit, determined to concentrate on singing and came home to pound the pavements looking for work. For years he made little headway. He sang a number of night clubs, but he was no big shot.
Then Raymond Muscarella, a Brooklyn business man, heard him sing, decided to manage him and got some bookings. Bob Hope heard him by accident, invited him on his Paramount Theater show and took him on tour for six days. Mitch Miller, head of Columbia Records popular record division, asked him to cut a record and guided him in producing more.
The first records made no history. Then, all at once, his popularity began to snowball. Now he is scheduled for appearances in Washington, Miami and Chicago theaters and the night club bookings are piling up. “He’s just different,” says one of his entourage in a puzzled voice. “This guy reads books.”

The soxers and boys grew up, styles in music changed (drastically), but Bennett still had a fan base, and added a new one as younger people discovered his old songs. (He even appeared on SCTV, singing "The Best is Yet To Come"). Despite being a victim of cruel Alzheimer's, he was still able to perform until two years ago. He was 96 when he died. Bob Lewis and Bob Hope picked a pretty good unknown for their spotlights.