The Good Life (5 page)

I was ten years old when I marched across the Triborough Bridge. My dad wasn’t there; he was too ill. He had finally been diagnosed with an “enlarged heart.” Today doctors could treat his illness, but in 1936 they were at a loss. Dad just got weaker and weaker. He still tried his best to help Mom with her piecework, and he looked after us when she went off to her job in the city. I remember him being at
home with us all day long, which was quite a role reversal for that time. He even taught my sister how to cook.

My father’s body ached so badly at night that he could hardly bear to have the bedsheets touch his limbs. He spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital on Governors Island; sometimes he’d have to be rushed there in the middle of the night. For some reason his heart would swell up and push against his lungs, which would fill up with fluid, making it almost impossible for him to breathe. I was always so confused and frightened when this happened. Every time he had an attack the house would be in chaos, but one night I woke up to find everyone in a complete uproar. Somehow, this time it was different; I could feel my mom’s panic. I remember shouting over and over, “Oh, my God, Ma, what’s happening?” But no one answered me. It was very late at night, everyone was running around like crazy, and once again they rushed my father to the hospital. This time he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and he contracted pneumonia. He soon lapsed into a semiconscious state.

I went to the hospital every day to visit him. The shades in his room were drawn, and there was a simple lamp by his bed. I sat next to him in the dim light just holding his hand and hoping more than anything that he would get better. After an agonizing three days he regained consciousness and seemed so alert that the doctors told us he had pulled through and would be able to come home. The next morning we readied his bedroom and marched down to the hospital. But when we arrived, the doctor came out to the waiting area and gathered us together. He told us that my father had suffered another bout of congestive heart failure and had died in the night. We were devastated. My father was only forty-one years old. I
couldn’t believe that this wonderful, beautiful man was really out of my life and that I would never see him again. I was heartbroken. My eyes welled up with tears and I wept.

The news hit us all like a ton of bricks, and I wasn’t sure my mom was going to get through this tragedy. That night the family gathered at the house, and there was complete pandemonium. My aunt Millie, in her grief, came up to my brother and me and shouted, “You killed him; you two killed my brother!” I was stunned. I had just lost my dad, and now, of all things, I was being blamed for his death. My mom was too distraught to reassure me that this was not the case, so I was left with the horrible impression that I had killed my father, and I suffered with this for a very long time.

The whole situation was so painful that this entire period of my life is a bit out of focus. I barely remember my dad’s funeral. To top it all off, after the funeral my father’s brother, Dominick, decided that now that my mom was a widow at thirty-six, with three kids to take care of, it would be better for her if I came to live with him upstate in Pyrites. That way, he said, she would have one less kid to worry about. I looked around in amazement as my uncle spoke, waiting for someone to veto this ridiculous proposition, but everyone thought it was a good idea. Everyone, that is, except me. Even my mom consented, and off to Pyrites I was sent.

Pyrites was a small, working-class mill town in 1936, about fifteen miles from the Canadian border. My Uncle Dominick and his wife Dominica owned the general store and farmed, and since it was summer, I helped out with the chores. Uncle Dominick never had kids, and he didn’t know the first thing about how to treat a child. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t particularly sensitive, either. One afternoon I was hanging out with my aunt in the kitchen while she was ironing, and she asked me to sing to her. So there I was, leaning against a chair,
singing, when in came my uncle. He started yelling at me, “Why don’t you do some work around here? Why don’t you milk a cow or something!” And with that he kicked the chair out from under me. He yelled at me all the time and he made me sleep on the floor. This kind of treatment certainly wasn’t what I was used to, and I missed my family desperately.

Fortunately, we had other relatives up in Pyrites. Our cousins the Futias lived next door. They had some wonderful kids my own age, including my favorite cousin, Mary Lou. I spent as much time with the Futias as I could. I hated going back “home” to my uncle’s house.

That fall I went to school with Mary Lou and her brothers and sisters. I didn’t like it much better than I had in Astoria, but I got to do some fun things. One time the whole school put on a play, and all the kids dressed in costumes representing the different nations of the world. Mary Lou and I were made up like we were from Japan. We were supposed to sing a song together called “Sing-A-Lee, Sing a Low-Down Tune,” but the teacher was so taken with my singing that I did most of the song by myself. After the show, all the parents gathered around me and asked me to sing. They thought I was “sophisticated,” since I had just come from New York, and they wanted me to do all the latest songs, like “Pennies from Heaven.” They dug into their pockets and gave me dimes and quarters to sing for them, which was extraordinary, since this was during the Depression.

Having lived in the city my whole life, my time in Pyrites was my first real exposure to nature. I’d never seen so much open space, so many trees and flowers, lakes and rivers, and just because it was so different from Astoria, I instantly liked it. I experienced a sense of freedom unlike anything I’d ever felt before. One of my favorite things to do was ice-skate on the beautiful St. Lawrence River. It was so peaceful there. I’d
go for miles and miles. The river froze solid—people drove big trucks right over the ice, that’s how thick it was.

After about nine months—a whole school year—my mom decided she missed me so much she wanted to have me back, so plans were made for my return.

I found out later that not long after my father’s funeral my Uncle Frank had decided my mother needed a vacation, and he took her and my Aunt Emma to the country for a week. He also decided that my family should move to a smaller and more affordable apartment. Although Mary was only sixteen at the time, it was left to her to make all the arrangements for the move, and have everything ready when my mom returned. So all by herself Mary found us a new apartment right across the street from Grandpa’s house on Thirty-second Street. Frank and Emma lived downstairs from my grandparents, so the family was now very close. Mary decided that she would share a room with my mother, and John and I would once again share a pull-out couch in the living room. I don’t know how she was able to handle so much responsibility at sixteen, but the move went smoothly. Mary has always been an amazing person.

When I returned from Pyrites, my family was already moved into the new apartment. It was one more shock in a very traumatic year, but I think I understood why we needed to make the move. With my father gone and my mother working all day, Mary was left to watch after John and me, and it was much easier on her for us to be in a smaller apartment, right across the street from my grandparents. My sister is a beautiful, wonderful woman whose whole life has been devoted to family. She was a surrogate parent to John and me, and she’s always been my main source of emotional support.

My mom kept working all day at the factory, and as before, she did piecework all evening. We’d meet her every night at the
subway station so that she wouldn’t have to carry that big bundle of dresses by herself, and in the morning we’d do the same thing in reverse. Even though she got paid by the dress, she’d sometimes pick one out and throw it aside. When I asked her why she did that, she told me, “I only work on quality dresses.” She wasn’t intentionally teaching me a lesson about integrity, but many years later, when producers and record companies tried to tell me what type of songs to record, in the back of my mind I could see my mother tossing those dresses over her shoulder. This has always been my inspiration for insisting on singing nothing but great songs.

My uncle Dick, one of my mother’s younger brothers, had been a “hoofer,” a dancer-for-hire on the vaudeville circuit. He performed under the name “Dick Gordon,” and was quite well-known. At the height of his career he even played the New York Palace, a huge theater in Manhattan and about as big a venue as one could play in those days. In the early 1900s vaudeville was the most popular form of entertainment. This was before the advent of movies and radio. For the price of one ticket you saw a multitude of different acts: singers, dancers, jugglers, acrobats, comics, everything you could think of But by the late thirties, vaudeville’s popularity had declined, and it became harder and harder for Uncle Dick to find work.

Eventually, because of his show business connections, he got a job at the box office of the Broadway Theatre on Broadway, between Fifty-second and Fifty-third Streets, a landmark theater that is still around today. It was a beautiful place and Uncle Dick was proud to work in such a distinguished theater.

Uncle Dick filled my head with all sorts of fascinating stories about show business. He told me all about the ins and outs of being a successful entertainer and warned me of the dangers of the road and what to watch out for. He taught me that talent isn’t everything; it’s really those entertainers who have empathy with their audience who are the most successful. He told me that nothing is ever really new: when people are raving about some new trend, chances are it’s been done before.

I loved to visit Uncle Dick at the theater. Once when the legendary French crooner Maurice Chevalier was playing there he got me in so I could watch both the rehearsals and Chevalier’s shows, the whole thing. It was wonderful. I got to know Chevalier later in my life, and he gave me some advice that I still use to this day. He told me to introduce the musicians to the audience. He said, “Show the people that there are artists on the stage other than yourself” Not only does this give the audience a rest during the show—they’re not just watching a singer with a microphone in his face the whole time—but it also acknowledges the many people on the stage and behind the scenes who are responsible for a great show. I’ve always believed in giving credit to those who work so hard to make it all happen.

I have a favorite Maurice Chevalier story. There was a musicians’ strike once when Chevalier was working at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Instead of canceling his performance. Chevalier came out and sang the whole show
a cappella
. And he got five standing ovations. Now that’s showmanship! In fact, I’ve used that very same technique during my own performances. I’ll turn off all the microphones and perform for the audience with only the pure acoustics of the hall to amplify my voice. Chevalier performed the whole show without any microphones or musicians! I can’t think of a better illustration of the old adage, “The show must go on.”

Uncle Dick also taught me that there are many rules to be followed in show business, but that sometimes breaking those rules is just as important as keeping them to become a classic performer. For every golden rule there is one waiting to be broken.

One day he sat me down and said in a very serious voice, “There is one singer who has changed the face of this business, and you must watch everything he does. His name is Bing Crosby, and he’s the boss.” From that day on I studied Bing. I learned a lot watching him grow as a performer. He’s the one who showed all of us how to do it. Bing’s early movies were overly dramatic; he was almost too hot for the screen, but with experience, he started relaxing. He’d just sit there on a stool and tell everybody to take it easy why not just go out fishing! He developed this real relaxed attitude that appealed to everybody.

Bing was one of the first performers to effectively use the microphone. Before the microphone, a singer had to sing very loudly in order for his voice to hit the back of the hall or, as Rudy Vallee is classically known for, he would use a cardboard megaphone to amplify the sound. Because of the microphone, Bing was able to relax his voice. There was no longer any need for operatics, and he was able to pioneer the art of intimate singing, which we call crooning. He developed a psychological style that got right under your skin. This was a revelation for singers, and Bing was the most popular singer of all time, bigger than Elvis and the Beatles combined.