Golden Age of Radio

The Milwaukee Journal- May 2, 1943      Browse this newspaper>>           Browse all newspapers>> Is Sinatra the Next Bing Crosby ? Ladies Swoon in Squads When They Hear Frank’s Dulcet Baritone Voice By Willa gray Martin NEW YORK N . Y . -(AP ) - If there’s a radio or teen age girl in your home you’ve heard of him. If there’s an Andy Hardy around, as well as a junior miss, you have more than heard of him. Undoubtedly a few impassioned arguments about him have burst about your innocent head. For Frank Sinatra , lanky 25 year old Hoboken (N. J.) boy , son of a city fireman, suddenly has become the singing idol of a large part of young America. Recently Frank finished an eight week run at the Paramount theater in New York City, the first time any one performer had stayed so long since Rudy Vallee was the nation’s vagabond lover, and that was ‘way back in ’29. Before this engag...

MORE THAN A CROONER SINATRA USES WORDS AS WELL AS MUSIC IN TOLERANCE BATTLE THERE are people who think FrankSinatra should climb down off his soapbox and stick to swooning the bobbysoxers. Intolerance, they will inform you, is a hot potato which has no business being kicked around as a publicity stunt by a radio crooner. But let all such skeptics be advised the Frankie Boy’s pitch for racial and religious understanding is the furthest thing from a publicity promotion. In fact, any good press agent would have counseled Frank that he’s putting his career in jeopardy to mention tolerance either pro or con. But Frank isn’t particularly concerned over the threat to his Hooper rating or box office appeal as a result of his campaign against discrimination. He plans to go right on beating the drums for tolerance and if his career crashes as a result, well, let it crash. The public got its first inkling that Frankie Boy’s emotions ran deeper than casting a romantic spe...

Performing was the only life that Sammy Davis Jr. knew. Sammy's parents were vaudevillians; his mother a Puerto Rican tap dancer, and Sammy Sr. was part of Will Mastin's dance troupe. When little Sammy was three his parents separated. Sammy Sr., not wanting to lose custody of his son, took him on the road. Soon the boy joined the act, which became the Will Mastin Trio. (When a theater manager would object to such a young child performing, Sammy Sr. would hand Sammy Jr. a rubber cigar and bill him as "Silent Sam, the Dancing Midget.”)  Show business and his father's protection largely shielded Sammy from racial prejudice while he was young, but he saw racism first hand when he answered the call to serve in the Army during WWII . "Overnight the world looked different. It wasn't one color anymore. I could see the protection I'd gotten my whole life from my father and Will... It was as if I had been walking through a swinging door for eighteen year, a do...