Frankie

There were two Frank Sinatras.

There was the Rat Packer who sang those great tunes backed by Billy May or Nelson Riddle, the pal of mobsters who got people banned at Vegas clubs if they “invaded his space” (this happened to a former co-worker of mine).

Then there’s the mellow singer that radio shows and cartoons made fun of, the thin guy with the bow tie who made girls hyper-ventilate after he left the Tommy Dorsey band.

Volumes have been written about Sinatra’s personal life, real and rumoured. I doubt there’s anything new to discuss. I’ll drag out something old instead.

This is a 1943 feature story from Hearst’s International News. It’s an effective piece of P.R., just what Sinatra’s handler George Evans wanted. Frankie appears to be just the aw-gee-shucks husband and father down the street, even though old Blue Eyes was already playing the female field. For his incessant, effective pushing that year, Evans won a scroll from Billboard for the “Most Effective Promotion of a Single Personality.”

At this point, Sinatra was on Your Hit Parade, sponsored by American Tobacco. At that point, Frankie didn’t rate more than having a CBS staff announcer assigned to his show. Later, the maker of Lucky Strikes would send in their big gun—Don Wilson.

Thousands Swoon
But interview with crooner fails to explain his ecstatic magnetism
By Inez Robb
International News Service Staff Correspondent
New York, July 10.—Why girls leave home in anno domini 1943 is spelled S-I-N-A-T-R-A.
When gals leave home from coast to coast these days the nation's police save themselves good bit of time and trouble by simply going and sitting on Frank Sinatra's doorstep in Hasbrouck Heights, N. J, until the kids turn up there.
Those are the incontrovertible facts, chums. But don't look at me and ask Why, Why, Why? Don't ask me either why almost as quickly as Sinatra's photo is posted outside a theater or radio studio, it's all covered with girlish love messages written in lipstick of every hue.
She Doesn't Get It.
Because darned if I know. I still don't know after thirty minutes in his presence, during which the greatest crooning phenomenon of the ages lived, breathed and talked. Even after seeing the current Miss Subway of New York City almost faint when actually presented to her idol, I still can't case it.
Furthermore, after watching his radio audience heave and, sway, moan and shriek, whistle and stamp in ecstacy at his presence, I don't get it.
Because if this undersized, pleasantly homely kid is the re-incarnation of Rudolph Valentino, Rudy Vallee, Bing Crosby and Charles Boyer, then I am Lana Turner in a bathing suit! What Frankie has got that the rest of you boys haven't got is beyond me!
But getting down to cases. I must admit that I found Frank Sinatra, at 25 the Casanova of the air, a right nice guy. And that's eating an awful lot of crow on the part of your correspondent, who went to the interview with a chip on her shoulder, prepared to pin back the ears of a conceited young mug over whom the nation's femininity at the moment is swooning in droves. (Just ask your neighborhood druggist about the upward curve in the sale of smelling salts!).
So, right away in the dressing room of the theater where he was rehearsing his radio show, I popped the $64 question.
"What," I purred, "does your wife think about a whole nation full of women sighing and lolly-gagging over her husband?"
Nancy Undertands.
"Well, Nancy's never said much about it," said Sinatra earnestly, as he puffed on his pipe with the long, long stem. "Nancy's a wonderful girl, and she doesn't resent it, I'm sure."
"You see," he explained, his blue eyes intent in his thin, sunburned face beneath a mop of very dark brown hair, "Nancy's got a sense of humor. And she knows how to reason."
And, after all, Nancy never had a ten-room house in Hasbrouck Heights, N. J., or a genuine mink coat until her own sex got taken by hysteria every time it tuned in on Sinatra or saw him do his stuff on the movie theater stage as an "added attraction."
Sitting there in the dressing room in a pair of chocolate brown slacks, a Barrymore shirt unbuttoned at the throat, a pale yellow sweater and a camel's hair sports jacket, and a gold wedding band on his left hand, this kid certainly did not look like my—or anybody else's—conception of Don Juan up to six months ago.
And I told him so without softening the blow.
"Well, gee!" he said. "Don't you think that I think I'm the reincarnation of Valentino! I'm going out to Hollywood in August to do a picture for R.K.O. All I ask is a nice, small, sympathetic part where I can sing a little.
"I don't know if I could ever carry the whole romantic lead in any picture, and get the girl in the final clinch.
"Gosh," reiterated the kid who has reintroduced the vapors to the nation as its leading feminine pastime, "I don't feel up to sweeping a girl off her feet! Look at me,” he demanded and I took a good gander, realizing that I was privy to a pleasure for which millions of women would gladly have swapped me rubies and gold.
"Just look at me? And how I photograph! I photograph horribly, honest," he grinned.
So when he goes out to Hollywood in August, Sinatra does not expect to erase Cary Grant, Fred MacMurray or Randolph Scott in a single scene. His voice may get into the boudoir, but the kid doesn't expect to follow it up. He'll let the other boys do the romantic work, while he sits out in the parlor, preferably with an accompanist and a good piano.
He's Eager to Learn
At rehearsals for his radio program, through which I sat, he could not have been more modest or more eager to learn from veterans like Milton Berle and Herbert Polesie, director of the show. Carefully and gratefully, he followed their instructions and suggestions about reading his lines.
During rehearsal, he grinned at Berle as the latter ad libbed, "What is it that Sinatra has that I haven't got and where can I get it?"
Success has happened so suddenly to Sinatra, only child of a city fireman in Hoboken, N. J., that he is as surprised as everybody else.
"I guess you'd say a whirlwind named Lady Luck has picked me up and here I am," he said. "Nancy and I are both thrilled to death by it. Neither of us has ever been happier in our lives. I can't put into words how thrilled I am by all this good fortune."
Sinatra even says a kind and hearty word for that lowest form of metropolitan life, the autograph hunter. Long before he was due to arrive for rehearsal, the front of the theater was seething with ‘teen age girls in cotton frocks, saddle shoes and ankle socks, all poised with pencils and autograph books.
But when he gets away from it all in that new 10-room house over in New Jersey, he mows his own lawn and clips his own hedge. It’s relaxing, he says. He also does a lot of carpentry at a work bench, which he built himself after moving into the house.
Sinatra is just plain nuts about one young lady, Nancy, Jr., 3, his only child.
“She is especially wonderful,” he said and I had to restrain him from relating innumerable smart sayings.
Both Get Mail.
Between his wife and himself, they get about 3,000 fan letters a week. Yes, Nancy, Sr., has her public too, with people wanting her picture and autograph no less than her spouse's. It keeps two secretaries busy answering the mail.
The dough, to put it bluntly, is rolling into the Sinatra bin at the moment. But except for the modest house and Nancy's mink coat—which he couldn't wait to buy her—"we haven't changed our way of living very much," Sinatra insisted. “Life is just about as it always was for us. We’re happy this way. Why should we change?”
Last winter, when Sinatra was suddenly swept into national fame through an engagement at the Paramount Theater in New York, the delirious, moaning, swooning ecstatic audience used to get so out of hand that it scared the wits out of Sinatra—the guy who was causing all the commotion.
"But now I know enough to clown around and string 'em along with me," he said.
Well, I can tell you that his audience may no longer scare Sinatra, but his radio audience scared the liver and lights out of me.
Finally the announcer, Olin Tice, had to ask the ‘teen age maniacs, mainly young girls from 16 to 19, to pipe down so the program could proceed. They literally had hit the roof when Sinatra put in his first appearance on the stage. He couldn’t open his mouth without such a gust of sighs going through the theater as was momentarily apt to waft away the proscenium arch.
"Modern hysteria in our time," muttered one of the boys in Raymond Scott's Orchestra, accompanying the phenom.
"You said it, brother," I agreed.
“Wimmen!” he snorted, as he picked up his sax.
Wimmen is right! But the gals had better know right now that one reason Nancy isn’t jealous of their delirium is because her husband still thinks she is prettier than any fan he’s ever seen.
“You bet!” he declared.
As for this disgruntled correspondent, she can pay Sinatra, the dream boy of the ages, no greater compliment than to say that to all appearances, the kid's hat still fits. And that, under the circumstances, is a major miracle.

Laff at This One

Once upon a time, there was a radio show called “Hobby Lobby,” where host Dave Elman would bring on people with unusual pastimes or accomplishments. Also once upon a time, director Norm McCabe and the writing staff at the Leon Schlesinger studio decided to parody it.

Some of the gags in Hobby Horse-Laffs (1942) are telegraphed. Some are weak. Maybe the most surreal one is when amateur magician Chutney Giggleswick (voiced by Kent Rogers as Richard Haydn), where he promises to make a fish bowl (including the fish and the cloth covering it) disappear.

McCabe has his animator move the magician's fingers and arms around a lot, otherwise the character would just be standing there.



The gag? You might have seen this coming. The magician disappears.



The body-less suit lifts the cloth. Chutney's head is in the bowl, with the fish staring at him. He looks at the empty suit and says "A fine magician you are!"



Tubby Millar gets the writing credit for the blah effort. McCabe seems to have had Millar and Don Christensen as his writing staff. Cal Dalton was picked for the rotating animation credit; John Carey, Izzy Ellis and Vive Risto were also in the unit. Robert C. Bruce is the narrator and a rube mail deliverer, while Mel Blanc continues to be ubiquitous in a number of roles.

McCabe’s other 1942 cartoons were Who’s Who in the Zoo (another spot gagger), Daffy’s Southern Exposure (one of McCabe’s best), Gopher Goofy (needs overly polite gophers), The Duckators (pretty good propaganda short), The Impatient Patient (Daffy anarchy) and The Daffy Duckaroo (fun Daffy song, war message spoils end).

That Felix is a Character

The silent era Felix the Cat can morph into all kinds of things, and he has a unique evolution in Japanicky (1928).

In his haste to hide from an angry traditional Japanese lord, he grabs a pictogram from a sign and turns himself into a character.

Felix wanders sideways, as a pictogram, to the lord and changes himself back.

There are some very nice settings in this cartoon and a neat literal gag where Felix gets some tea from a tree. The tea is the letter ‘T.’

Like all the Jacques Kopfstein Felixes, when sound was added, Felix indistinguished jabbers through the whole cartoon.

Christmas Comedy in Little Rock

Where was Jack Benny 100 years ago today? On stage, where else?

Radio was the new fad in 1922 but Jack would take another ten years to get there. In the meantime, he was criss-crossing the U.S. and Canada in vaudeville. On the right, you can see the bill for his Christmas stop in Little Rock, Arkansas. He had come from playing a split week in Oklahoma City and Tulsa on the Interstate Circuit. My guess is after the three shows, he had a layoff as he began a two-day performance on January 4th at the Orpheum in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

He seems to have been well-received by the entertainment press of the day, and the Little Rock papers were no exception.

Advance Notices:
Jack Benny is said to prove that there is a sense of humor in the violin in proper hands. Jack is a combination of musician and comedian. He plays a little but very well, springs some “hot ones” a great deal and keeps his audience thoroughly amused. – Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 24, and Little Rock Daily News, Dec. 25.
Jack Benny, “the funny man with the violin,” is said to combine music and mirth in a skit in which he plays the violin and at the same time indulges in a line of clever chatter. – Arkansas Democrat, Dec. 25.
Jack Benny will be remembered by Majestic patrons as the “funny man with the violin.” He blends music and nonsensical chatter. – Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 25.

Reviews:
And then there is another fascinating bit of entertainment provided by Jack Benny, who fools with a violin incidentally and principally passes out a line of subtle clean-cat [sic] humor the like of which only Benny can put across. – Arkansas Democrat, Dec. 26.
Jack Benny, the funny man with a violin, scored a decided hit at yesterday’s performance. Benny plays well and his new comedy is unique and good. – Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 26.
A subtle brand of humor is dispensed by Jack Benny, funny man, who makes his violin incidental to a good line of humor. – Arkansas Democrat, Dec. 27.

While the ad refers to “a Snappy Majestic News Weekly,” the newspaper stories simply refer to it as “Fox News.” Yes, there was such a thing before television. It was a standard newsreel.

By the way, if you smell something phoney about a psychic Cherokee princess, well, researchers discovered her name was actually Loretta May Navarre and she was born in Monroe, Michigan to a pair of Romanian immigrants. She did predict a New York Giants victory in the World Series in 1922, but 50/50 odds are pretty good ones. She died in California in 1968.

I’m not sure who would want to spend Christmas Day in a vaudeville house but a lot of people did as theatres were open across the country. Among the hundreds and hundreds of acts performing Christmas Day 1922 were Nat Burns at the Grand in Atlanta (he later changed his name to “George”), Smith and Dale at the Schubert in Cincinnati, Van and Schenck at Keith’s Orpheum in Brooklyn, Georgie Jessel at the Aldine in Pittsburgh, the four Marx Brothers at the Astoria on Long Island, Swift and Kelly at the Palace in Chicago (Mary Kelly was later Jack Benny’s girl-friend) and everyone’s favourite at the Orpheum in Germantown, Pennsylvania—Fink’s Mules.

The Christmas Gift of Guilt

No, sir, you won’t catch me falling for that Christmas cartoon sentiment. Not me.

I say this every year. And then I watch MGM’s Oscar-nominee The Night Before Christmas. It’s roped me in again.

There are plenty of emotions pantomimed by Tom and Jerry. The settings are elaborately rendered. Scott Bradley score follows the mood of the action. And Joe Barbera came up with a well-structured story with humour and whimsy.

In one sequence, Jerry escapes from Tom by jumping through a mail slot outside into a snow storm. Now, Tom can contentedly relax. But then he becomes worried about the mouse. Hanna cuts to some exterior shots.



The climax of the cartoon follows where the trepidious Tom rescues the frozen Jerry, restores him to health, and the two exchange holiday good wishes.

What’s interesting is both the Showmen’s Trade Review and Motion Picture Herald refer to a gift-exchange scene at the start of the cartoon. Perhaps it was part of the original plot synoposis sent to the trades because the short doesn’t have anything of the sort. The Showmen’s review is to the right. Two trade papers say the release date was to be December 6, 1941 but The Hollywood Reporter blurbed on the 10th the cartoon would open at Grauman’s Chinese and Loew’s State the next day “and elsewhere as master prints have been Clippered to all unoccupied countries.” Trade ads were promoting the cartoon as early as November 13th.

Mark Kausler points out the animators are Jack Zander, George Gordon, Pete Burness, Irv Spence, Cecil Surry and Bill Littlejohn. Keith Scott mentions the opening narration is by Frank Graham.

Give the Gift of Wolf-Pelt

Tex Avery had Christmas scenes in several of his cartoons (A Gander at Mother Goose, Holiday Highlights), and an appearance by Santa Claus in another (Who Killed Who?), but he really only made one Christmas cartoon—One Ham’s Family at MGM (1943).

Being a Christmas cartoon, it was naturally released on August 14 (though it played starting August 12 at Loew’s Harrisburg).

The end gag is familiar animated cartoon material with Avery’s little stamp. The mean widdle pig has had an off-screen fight with the wolf that wants to eat him. In the wind-up, the kid hands his mom a Christmas present. A fur!



A turn reveals the source of the fur—the wolf.



“Why, this coat is just what I need,” says mama pig. The wolf reaches into the scene. “You and me, both, sister!”



The wolf gallops away, the cartoon ending with a typical Avery sign.



I prefer the version in Swing Shift Cinderella (1945) when the stalk of corn pops up.

Rich Hogan is Avery’s gag man here, with animation credited to Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love.

The star of the cartoon is Kent Rogers, doing Red Skelton’s jerk kid character, the Gildersleeve wolf (no, Wikipedia, that’s not his name) and the narrator, with Sara Berner as mama pig and Pinto Colvig sounding closer to Andy Devine than Disney’s Practical Pig in this one.