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Excerpt: 'Frank: The Voice'

NPR | By James Kaplan

Published November 9, 2010 at 9:23 AM EST

Act Three: Higher and Higher

"Good morning. My name is Frank Sinatra."

-- His first line in the movies, in the 1943 RKO Radio Pictures feature Higher and Higher

11.

"EXTRA ADDED ATTRACTION," was indeed how the Paramount first billed him: fourth on the program, beneath Benny Goodman and His Famous Orchestra, under a comedy trio called the Radio Rogues and a comedy duo called Moke and Poke, and just above "DON BAKER at the PARAMOUNT ORGAN." Frank Sinatra's name was, however, the only one besides Goodman's in boldface, and in type only slightly smaller. And beneath the name, the slogan: "The Voice That Has Thrilled Millions."

It was true enough. But the phrase itself sounded like something that would have rolled off the stentorian tongue of some radio announcer of the 20s or 30s. And here in January 1943 -- one of those hinges in time that come along periodically, a moment when everything simply vaults forward -- Frank Sinatra, a radically new American product, needed drastic re-packaging, and somebody new to do it.

The coiner of the slogan was another of Sinatra's agents at the time, a soon-to-be-forgotten figure named Harry Kilby. The publicist who convinced the powers that be at the Paramount to affix the tired-sounding strapline to the bottom of the marquee was one Milt Rubin, a Times Square hack and the willing slave of the Emperor Winchell -- Walter, of course. Sinatra had hired Rubin in the fall of ‘42, soon after leaving Dorsey, on a tip from the all-powerful columnist, and had quickly come to regret it. The p.r. man treated Frank like just another act, no more important than anyone else on his C-list roster of ventriloquists, acrobats, and female impersonators. Meanwhile Rubin hovered around Winchell's table at Lindy's, laughing at the great man's jokes and begging for scraps. There were times Sinatra -- admittedly a high-maintenance client -- couldn't reach his fifty-dollar-a-week publicist on the telephone. Nancy, who wrote the checks, began ignoring Rubin's bills. This got his attention, though not in a good way: the publicist initiated legal proceedings against his client.

Manie Sacks of Columbia, Sinatra's new rabbi, had the solution. "George Evans is your man," he told Frank. "He's the best in the business -- the best there ever was."

This was manifestly true. Between Rubin and Evans, there was simply no comparison. A glance into the former's fusty Times Square office would have made it clear: a cluttered couple of rooms behind a frosted-glass transom door, an old broad in a snood doing her nails at the reception desk while some sweaty guy with a Chihuahua cooled his heels. In George B. Evans's clean and modern Columbus Circle suite, on the other hand, there were three assistants fielding calls from clients like Mr. Glenn Miller, Mr. Duke Ellington, and Miss Lena Horne.

Evans was 40, in the prime of his life, and he was a dynamo, with a thrusting determined jaw and a ravening look in his piercing dark eyes. Lightly balding, bespectacled (tortoise-shell frames were his trademark), handsome in his way, he dressed well, spoke fast and crisply, came straight to the point. And he had a good opinion of himself, with reason: He lived for his clients, and his clients did well by him. Their joys were his joys; their sorrows were his, too. If they needed solace at 4 a.m., he picked up the phone, no questions asked. He was as expert at making trouble go away as he was at whipping up excitement.

In return he was choosy about whom he wanted to represent. Where this Sinatra boy was concerned, Evans was skeptical at first, Manie Sacks's laudatory call notwithstanding. Singers were a dime a dozen, and what was a singer, anyway, without a band? The bands made news, the bands brought the crowds. And the bandleaders were gods. Glenn, Duke: God, just the thought of these brilliant, elegant, authoritative men gave Evans chills. In some sense, representing them made him feel he was taking on their qualities.

But a boy singer! This one might even be different from the rest -- from what he had heard on records and the radio, Evans was willing to grant that. It was a pleasant voice, nicely expressive. Still, George Evans didn't quite see what all the fuss was about.

"You've got to go see him, Georgie," Sacks said. "This kid really does have something. Go to the Paramount and see what he does to those girls."

Evans went, and saw. Nick Sevano, Sinatra's Hoboken homeboy and soon-to-be-ex-gofer (one too many tantrums about starch in the shirts; life was too short -- except that Sevano would spend the rest of his very long life trading, like so many others, on his acquaintance with the singer), met the publicist in the Paramount lobby and whisked him down the aisle in the middle of the 2:30 show. Evans, not easily impressed, gaped at what he saw.

Actually, the sound and smell were what hit him at first. The place was absolutely packed with hysterical teenaged girls, almost five thousand of them, fire laws be damned (the couple of hundred Paramount owner Bob Weitman had slipped to the Fireman's Fund earned him a lot of extra money). They were jamming the seats, the aisles, the balcony -- all but hanging from the rafters. And hanging raptly on the words to the song the starved-looking kid in the spotlight at center stage was singing --

Be careful, it's my heart…

and going nuts when he hit that last word:

It's not my watch you're holding, it's my he-art….

The (by now very practiced) catch in his voice, the tousled spit-curl on his forehead (no Dorsey anymore to order him to comb it), the help-me look in his bright-blue eyes (always, pointedly, laser-focused on one girl or another in the audience) -- it all set them off like dynamite. The air in the great auditorium was vibrating, both with ear-splitting screams (FRANKIEEE!!! FRANKIEEE!!!) and the heat and musk of female lust. Evans could smell perfumes, b.o., the faint acrid tang of urine (the girls would come for the first show at 9:15 a.m. and stay for show after show, determined never to relinquish a precious seat even if it meant soaking it), and something else. They were like a great herd of female beasts, he thought with wonderment, all in heat at once….