25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Frankie Laine

October 25, 2019

Frankie Laine, born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio, was a successful American singer, songwriter and actor whose career spanned 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of “That’s My Desire” in 2005. Often billed as America’s Number One Song Stylist, his other nicknames include Mr. Rhythm, Old Leather Lungs, and Mr. Steel Tonsils. His hits included “That’s My Desire”, “That Lucky Old Sun”, “Mule Train”, “Cry of the Wild Goose”, “Jezebel”, “High Noon”, “I Believe”, “Hey Joe!”, “The Kid’s Last Fight”, “Cool Water”, “Moonlight Gambler”, “Love is a Golden Ring”, “Rawhide”, and “Lord, You Gave Me a Mountain”.

He sang well-known theme songs for many movie Western soundtracks, including 3:10 To Yuma, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and Blazing Saddles, although he was not a country & western singer. Laine sang an eclectic variety of song styles and genres, stretching from big band crooning to pop, western-themed songs, gospel, rock, folk, jazz and blues. He did not sing the soundtrack song for High Noon, which was sung by Tex Ritter, but his own version was the one that became a bigger hit.

A clarion-voiced singer with lots of style, able to fill halls without a microphone, and one of the biggest hit-makers of late 1940s/early 1950s, Laine had more than 70 charted records, 21 gold records, and worldwide sales of over 100 million records. Originally a rhythm and blues influenced jazz singer, Laine excelled at virtually every music style, eventually expanding to such varied genres as popular standards, gospel, folk, country, western/Americana, rock ‘n’ roll, and the occasional novelty number. He was also known as Mr Rhythm for his driving jazzy style.

Laine was the first and biggest of a new breed of black-influenced singers who rose to prominence in the post-World War II era. This new, raw, emotionally charged style seemed at the time to signal the end of the previous era’s singing styles; and was, indeed, a harbinger of the rock ‘n’ roll music that was to come. As music historian Jonny Whiteside wrote:

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Frankie Lymon

October 25, 2019

Franklin Joseph “Frankie” Lymon was an American rock and roll/rhythm and blues singer and songwriter, best known as the boy soprano lead singer of a New York City-based early rock and roll group, The Teenagers. The group was composed of five boys, all in their early to mid teens. The original lineup of the Teenagers, an integrated group, included three African American members, Frankie Lymon, Jimmy Merchant and Sherman Garnes, and two Puerto Rican members, Herman Santiago and Joe Negroni.

The Teenagers’ first single, 1956’s “Why Do Fools Fall in Love”, was also their biggest hit. After Lymon went solo in mid-1957, both his career and those of the Teenagers fell into decline. By age 25, he was found dead in his grandmother’s bathroom from a heroin overdose. His life inspired the 1998 film, Why Do Fools Fall In Love?.

Frankie Lymon was born in Harlem to a truck driver father and a mother who worked as a maid. Lymon’s father, Howard Lymon, also sang in a gospel group known as the Harlemaires; Frankie Lymon and his brothers Lewis and Howie sang with the Harlemaire Juniors. The Lymon family struggled to make ends meet, and Lymon began working as a grocery boy at age ten, augmenting his legitimate income with proceeds gained from hustling prostitutes and was known for having relationships with women twice his age.

At the age of 12, Lymon heard a local doo-wop group known as the Coupe De Villes at a school talent show. He befriended their lead singer, Herman Santiago, and he eventually became a member of the group, now calling itself both The Ermines and The Premiers. Dennis Jackson of Columbus, Georgia was one of the main influences of Lymon’s life. His personal donation of $500 helped start Frankie’s career.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Franklin Pangborn

October 25, 2019

Franklin Pangborn was an American comedic character actor. Pangborn was famous for small, but memorable roles, with a comic flair. He appeared in many Preston Sturges movies as well as the W.C. Fields films International House, The Bank Dick, and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. For his contributions to motion pictures, Pangborn has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1500 Vine Street.

Pangborn was born in New Jersey. In the early 1930s, he worked in short subjects for Mack Sennett, Hal Roach, Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and Pathe, almost always in support of the leading players. He also appeared in dozens upon dozens of feature films in small roles, cameos, and in recurring gags of various types.

One of those character actors who always played essentially the same character no matter the situation, Pangborn portrayed a fussy type of person, polite, elegant, and highly energetic, often officious, fastidious, somewhat nervous, prone to becoming flustered but essentially upbeat, and with an immediately recognizable high-speed patter-type speech pattern. He typically played an officious desk clerk in a hotel, a self-important musician, a fastidious headwaiter, an enthusiastic birdwatcher, and the like, and was usually put in a situation of frustration or was comedically flustered by someone else’s topsy-turvy antics.

Pangborn’s screen character, which might be described at times as prissy or flighty, was often considered a gay stereotype, although such a topic was too sensitive in his day to be discussed overtly in the dialogue. A rare exception occurred in International House, which was filmed before the Hays Office fully censored filmmaking, and was notable for several risqué references. In this scene, Fields has just arrived by autogyro at the titular hotel in the fictitious Chinese city called “Wu Hu”, but he does not know for sure where he is. Pangborn is the hotel manager:

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Frazier Hunt

October 25, 2019

Frazier Hunt was an American radio announcer, writer and war correspondent during both World War I and World War II. He wrote several books about his experience during both World Wars as well as historical biographies on famous Americans such as General George Armstrong Custer.

Hunt spent his boyhood in a small Indiana town and after two years in Chicago and three in Mexico he returned to another small mid-western town to edit the local paper. It was with this background that he came to New York City in 1916 and joined the staff of the The Sun. From New York he went to France and from there to Russia where for months he had the Revolution all to himself. Two trips around the world followed and several long sojourns in Europe.

One of his better-selling books was about his World War I experiences entitled Blown in By the Draft, published by Doubleday in 1918. His Untold Story of General MacArthur was based upon his war correspondence duties as he followed Douglas MacArthur through the Pacific. He is also portrayed in the movie Lawrence of Arabia as the war correspondent who made Lawrence famous in the west.

As a broadcaster, Hunt presented Frazier Hunt and the News on the CBS Radio Network in the early 1940s.

25 Oct 2019
Television Permalink

Fred Mister Rogers

October 25, 2019

Fred McFeely Rogers was an American educator, Presbyterian minister, songwriter, and television host. Rogers was most famous for creating and hosting Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Rogers was well known for his gentle, soft-spoken personality and his directness to his audiences; Over the course of his decades on television, he became an indelible American icon of children’s entertainment and education, as well as a symbol of compassion, patience, and morality. He was also known for his advocacy of various public causes. He testified to the U.S. Supreme Court on time shifting; and he gave a now-famous speech before the U.S. Senate, advocating government funding for children’s television rather than the Vietnam War.

On July 9, 2002, President George W. Bush awarded Fred Rogers the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor, for his contributions to Children’s Education. The President stated, “Fred Rogers has proven that television can soothe the soul and nurture the spirit and teach the very young”.

Fred McFeely Rogers was born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, 40

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Fred Allen

October 25, 2019

Fred Allen was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.

His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny, but it was only part of his appeal; radio historian John Dunning wrote that Allen was radio’s most admired comedian and most frequently censored. A master adlibber, Allen often tangled with his network’s executives, while developing routines the style and substance of which influenced contemporaries and futures among comic talents, including Groucho Marx, Stan Freberg, Henry Morgan and Johnny Carson, but his fans also included President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and novelists William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and Herman Wouk. Ironically, in view of his often barbed observations of the medium, Fred Allen was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for contributions to television.

Born as John Florence Sullivan in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Irish Catholic parents, Allen barely knew his mother, Cecilia Herlihy Sullivan, who died of pneumonia when he was not quite three years old. His father, James Henry Sullivan, and his infant brother, Robert, were taken in by one of his mother’s sisters, “my Aunt Lizzie”, around whom he focused the first chapter of his second memoir, Much Ado About Me. The father was so shattered by the mother’s death that, according to his son, he drank more heavily. His aunt suffered as well: her husband Michael was partially paralyzed by lead poisoning shortly after they married, leaving him mostly unable to work, something Allen remembered as causing contention among Lizzie’s sisters. Eventually, Allen’s father remarried and offered his sons the choice between coming with him and his new wife or staying with Aunt Lizzie. Allen’s younger brother chose to go with their father, but Allen decided to stay with his aunt. “I never regretted it,” he wrote.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Fred Astaire

October 25, 2019

Fred Astaire, born Frederick Austerlitz, was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films.

According to another major innovator in filmed dance, Gene Kelly, “The history of dance on film begins with Astaire.” Beyond film and television, many classical dancers and choreographers, Rudolf Nureyev, Michael Jackson, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Jerome Robbins among them, also acknowledged his importance and influence.

Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Johanna “Ann” and Frederic “Fritz” Austerlitz. Astaire’s mother was born in the United States to Lutheran German immigrants from East Prussia and Alsace, while Astaire’s father was born in Linz, Austria, to Jewish parents who had converted to Catholicism.

After arriving in New York City at age 24 on October 26, 1892, and being processed at Ellis Island, Astaire’s father, hoping to find work in his brewing trade, moved to Omaha, Nebraska, and landed a job with the Storz Brewing Company. Astaire’s mother dreamed of escaping Omaha by virtue of her children’s talents after Adele Astaire early on revealed herself to be an instinctive dancer and singer. She planned a “brother-and-sister act,” which was common in vaudeville at the time. Although Astaire refused dance lessons at first, he easily mimicked his older sister’s step and took up piano, accordion, and clarinet.

25 Oct 2019
Recording Permalink

Frank Luther

October 25, 2019

Frank Luther was an American country music singer, dance band vocalist, playwright, songwriter and pianist.

Born Francis Luther Crow on a farm near Lakin, Kansas, forty miles from the Colorado line, he was raised on a farm near Hutchinson, Kansas, where his father, William R. Crow, and mother, Gertrude Phillips Crow, dealt in livestock and trotting horses. He began to study piano at age 6, improvising his own music when repetitious exercises bored him, and began vocal instruction at 13.

Three years later, he toured the Midwest as tenor with a quartet called The Meistersingers. He began studying at the University of Kansas, but attended a revival meeting conducted by Jesse Kellems and was so deeply impressed that he accepted an offer from the evangelist to become his musical director. During a subsequent stop in Iola, Kansas, young Crow himself was ordained, despite his never having studied for the ministry.

By 1921, the Reverend Francis Luther Crow was in the pulpit of the First Christian Church in Bakersfield, California. There, he organized a 30-voice children’s choir, an 80-voice adult choir, and two church orchestras. Writing and delivering his weekly sermons proved more problematic, and the Boy Preacher, as he was known locally, resigned to devote his creative energies to the world of music.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio, Television Permalink

Frank Morgan

October 25, 2019

Frank Morgan was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of the title character in the film The Wizard of Oz.

Born as Francis Phillip Wuppermann in New York City, the youngest of eleven children, to the wealthy family that distributed Angostura bitters, he attended Cornell University where he was tapped into the New York Alpha Chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity, and through that organization was a member, Irving Literary Society. He then followed his older brother Ralph Morgan into show business, first on the Broadway stage and then into motion pictures.

His first film was The Suspect in 1916. In 1917 he provided support to his friend John Barrymore in Raffles The Amateur Cracksman, an independent film produced in and about New York City. Morgan’s career expanded when talkies began, his most stereotypical role being that of a befuddled but good-hearted middle-aged man. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1934’s The Affairs of Cellini, where he played the cuckolded Duke of Florence and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1942’s Tortilla Flat, where he played a simple Hispanic man.

Other movies of note include The Great Ziegfeld, The Shop Around the Corner, The Human Comedy, The Mortal Storm, The White Cliffs of Dover and his last movie, Key to the City, which was released after his death, in Beverly Hills, California.