MEMOIRS

The Way I Saw It around Old Blue Eyes

In 1939, Hitler was goose-stepping all over Europe, while America was just starting to pick up the beat from the long, dragged-out Depression President Franklin Roosevelt vowed to defeat. I was ten years old and just about four feet small, but my mind was ten feet tall. I was working in a barbershop. In those days, if you wanted to know what was going on in the world and the little circle of gossip, the barbershop was the place to find out. I was taping in my head everything that was said. By the time I was seven, I knew babies didn't come from heaven. And Santa Claus ... I still believed what my parents said about him was the truth. He was the only thing to hold onto to keep my youth. My boss was always listening to Guy Lombardo and the Metropolitan Opera on the radio, but I was trained on the sounds of Shaw, Miller, James, Basie, Ellington, and Jimmy Lunsford. And when I heard a vocalist who had just started with Harry James singing, "All or Nothing at All," I followed his pipes right down the line from the very first note.

Two years with Harry James flew by, and with all the money I earned, I piled up a stack of 78s, while the state of the nation was lend leasing to keep the peace in this side of heaven. But from all the shoptalk, I sensed at eleven this side of heaven was in for a surprise. And on December 7, 1941, all hell broke loose, when Tokyo flew from its coup to a place where all our carriers were in one group. On that day, most Americans learned a little geography: where Pearl Harbor was.

Everybody between the ages of seventeen to forty-five was taking the oath, raising their hand to make a stand. I was too young to go to war and too old to play kick the can, but I did my part in my own little way, printing signs of warning—"A slip of the lip will sink a ship"—and buying war bonds. But I was still buying records of my favorite vocalist, who, by the way, transferred to the Tommy Dorsey Band to replace Jack Lenard, who answered the call of the bugler. My man blended with Connie Haines and the Pied Pipers to tunes like "I'll Never Smile Again," "Last Call for Love," "Poor You," and a slew of others. I was making all the local hops, still working in the barbershop, when I thought my world was going to stop when he didn't want to get caught in the draft and went to join the big band over there. He took his physical in New York, and for the first time in his career, they turned him down. They found a leak in his eardrum.

It was 1943, and Tommy Dorsey set him free (the rumor was for forty thousand dollars) to make it on his own. I was fourteen and one inch under five feet. I was really moving up, chinning all the bars and downing coffee cups filled with booze to the old saying, "Bottoms up." I wore a "zoot suit" which was a one-button roll, blue shadow stripe suit with twenty-eight inches of material dropped over the knee, down to a fourteen-inch peg at the bottom of my featherweight, French-toed shoes. There was a hand-painted tie with its Windsor knot under a five-inch, roll-collared, white on white shirt, with a pocket full of silver and a solid gold chain twirling around my finger.

Still too young to go to war and too old to play kick the can, I was making the scene at the Steel Pier, a mile out to sea, cutting a rug with the rest of the jitterbugs to Woody Herman's "Wood Chopper's Ball." The man made a hit with Cole Porter's "Night and Day," the one number he did in the film Reveille with Beverly. I stood in line at the Paramount early in the morning to spend the day and night. Everybody brown-bagged it in those days. With one admission, we slept through the feature and were awakened by the screams of the bobby-soxers biting their nails and wagging their tongues. We knew the movie was done, and the man wearing a cardigan jacket and silk, oversized bow tie was going to pick us up on a high without booze and drugs.

The war was moving on, and while Martin Block was spinning the records for the home front with Make Believe Ballroom Time, a couple of DJs by the names of Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally were playing the hit tunes hot off the wax from Tin Pan Alley, spinning requests for uninvited guests—one from the East and one from the West. Never the twain shall meet, for after D Day, Hitler was running out of fuel, and the world he was burning backfired in his face. But we still had a long way to go. We still had Tokyo in the race.

From 1943 to 1945, the man hit the beaches of Hollywood with Higher and Higher, singing songs by Jimmy McHugh and Harold Arlen: "I Couldn't Sleep a Wink Last Night," "A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening," "The Music Stopped," and "I Saw You First." He sang "You Belong in a Love Song" and was starring in Step Lively, singing Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn's, "Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are," "Some Other Time," and "As Long as There's Music."

In 1944, I was too young to go to war and too old to play kick the can. There I was, in my teens, between my dreams and reality. My past was a short subject, the present was an added attraction, and the future was a distraction about what decision to make, because there was a duration on everyone's life about whether or not they were going to be called to war between the ages of seventeen and forty-five.

That year, FDR won by a landslide and was in for four more years. I was fifteen, and since the age of three, he had been the only president for me. I left the shop I was working in for the past nine years for a raise in pay from five dollars to fifteen dollars a week, plus tips. Gene Krupa with Anita O'Day inspired me to take a trip with their hit record, "Let Me Off Uptown." I was heading in the right direction after nine years in a neighborhood shop. I made the move uptown, meeting people, not just faces. The word got around there was a "singing barber" in town. I was stepping lively, building a reputation with my scissors and comb, cutting D.A. (duck's ass) style haircuts without a clipper in my hand. But in my heart, I still was following the man. Then, in 1945, I skipped a day from school and went with a bunch of guys to see him at the Earl Theater in Philly. I was sitting in the balcony, and he was singing, "Violets for Your Furs." The room was in complete silence; you could hear a pin drop. Well, some wise guys dropped some pennies on stage, and he stopped the music. He picked them up and said, "A penny earned is a penny saved." He got a standing ovation, and those wise guys had to stand and hide in the crowd to throw off the slightest evidence they caused the thundering applause. I turned sixteen that spring, twixt love and war. It was another year to go before it was my turn to exchange my "zoot suit" for a pair of khakis, web belt, and combat boots. But on August 6, 1945 a new age was about to take place. Kids my age suddenly became alive at the cost of one hundred thousand people who didn't survive that dreadful day because of the splitting of the atoms dropped from the bomb bay doors of the Enola Gay.

I was sixteen, and time ran out for our nation's only thirteen-year president, FDR. It made me realize the only thing permanent was change. Truman took over the reins, and after "Anchors Aweigh," he gave the orders to drop the bomb on two cities not far from Tokyo Bay. Every town, large or small, had a ball on VJ Day. I missed being eligible to fight in the war by just one year. I had mixed emotions, but I stood up and cheered when Japan surrendered and signed the papers to make it official on the decks of the USS Missouri, with Old Glory proudly waving our boys back home to join the "52-20 Club" and take advantage of the GI Bill which meant that they would receive twenty dollars a week for fifty-two weeks. It was postwar year 1946. I was seventeen and old enough to take the state barber's exam. I passed it with flying colors in the month of June, and on July 6, 1946, I opened my own business, instead of going back to finish my senior year. Instead of taking classes, I stood behind the chair, cutting hair. I was a pioneer, who later would be called a dropout. The dark clouds of the war were in the past and left an over cast. But when I went to see my man in a movie called Till the Clouds Roll By, where he stood on a white kettle drum, dressed in a chalk-white, one-button, roll tux; white shirt; white bow tie; and white shoes, with fifty pieces surrounding him, singing the classic, "Old Man River," I felt clear skies were ahead.

Things were happening so fast. Industries made quick changes from bombs and bullets to cars with rubber tires. Synthetics were melted down, and there were no more ration stamps. You could have all the gas and cigarettes you wanted to burn, and plenty of sugar, coffee, and food. We were the victors, and we dwelled in the spoils, but I couldn't help thinking of all the people, our allies from Europe, who also won, going back to their bombed-out homes and so much work that had to be done before they could even start to get back what we always had. So, I would listen to the voice that always lightened any heavy thoughts that entered my mind. After It Happened in Brooklyn, the one movie he made in 1947, he was cast in Miracle of the Bells as a priest named Father Paul, to challenge the critics and show he could act as well as sing without musical accompaniment, singing "Forever Homeward" a cappella. In my barbershop, customers would rub me, as if I was going to go to church because I looked like a priest in my white, starched-collard, barber shirt with a black jacket. Little did they know I gave it some thought.

In 1948, I was making out like a bandit. I had already been in business for two years, and I was well established, with the shop open five days a week. I had Mondays off to give me time in the summer down in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to make my move when the crowd left on Sunday night. I had all the room and a lot to spare on the beach with all the "peaches," what we called the pretty girls on the beach. Monday was never blue for me.

If you think the ribbing in the shop was bad in 1947, well, this year, I was the laughing stock when my man came back with one called The Kissing Bandit. I was going to call Hollywood and ask them what were they doing with all that talent, but I stood my ground and defended him through Take Me Out to the Ball Game and On the Town in 1949.

Then came the year everyone wanted to throw back, 1950. We hit the half-century mark, and just seventeen days after ringing her in and less than five years after Japan's surrender was signed on her decks, the navy became a physical wreck when the USS Missouri ran aground in Chesapeake Bay. Douglas MacArthur was the man of the hour, and Margaret Truman's singing début went sour, while baseball's perfect mix of Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, and Hank Bauer swept the "Whiz Kids" out of Manhattan Towers. On Broadway, Mary Martin was washing that man right out of her hair under an open shower in South Pacific.

Ezzard Charles stopped Joe Louis, the "Brown Bomber," who came back to pay Uncle Sam, the same "man" he gave up all his earnings to during the war and didn't keep score, but made the mistake to tax himself a dollar or two. The swinger of the year wasn't Ted Williams but a portly king named Farouk. He stripped his mother, Queen Nazli, clean—crown and all. If there were an Oscar for "People with Family Problems" he would have won. After examining him, the whole world could take heart.

Things were dull as usual in the White House. The eightieth Congress declared a two-month recess in September so members could go home and campaign for elections. Most people agreed with Truman's appraisal of the Eighty Worst leaving Washington, with Joe McCarthy, Alger Hiss, and Whittaker Chambers still digging up the pumpkin papers down on the farm somewhere in Maryland, with spies and bombs and the secrets thereof. The Rosenbergs—Julius and Ethel—were convicted in a controversial trial. Prices were rising, along with Mount Everest, the world's tallest challenge. An earthquake raised her peak 198 feet.

The year 1950 was the year that launched the cashless society. Thanks to a man by the name of Francis Xavier McNamara and the Diners Club, for the sum of five dollars, you would have top priority at twenty-seven New York restaurants. You could stay over at two hotels and have all you wanted to eat and drink with just a stroke of a pen. "Dine N Sign" was the famous line. The joke of the cold war crowd was how we could go to war with Russia, a country that accepted our Diners Club card.

While all this was going on, my man didn't make a movie, and club dates were declining. His concentration was divided, and I felt he was undecided on what decisions to make. I was twenty-one, and the way this was going, I knew before I was twenty-two my draft card would be due. Sure enough, by the end of the year, army doctors were looking up my nose and sticking things in my ears. I took the smear, cleared my throat, raised my right hand, took the oath, and for the next two years, reluctantly joined the rest of the guys like me who missed World War II. It wasn't so bad at first: meeting new faces through "basic," weeding out the stiffs, and mixing with the willows, who bended backward to be a friend.

Three square meals a day, with Uncle Sam footing the bill on a cruise across the Pacific. But a lot of guys failed him with their guts blown to bits on Pork Chop Hill. While over there, I kept in touch with what I loved best: my music. Jo Stafford was back in style with her hit, "You Belong to Me" and Joni James, a newcomer in the game, came up with a question, "Why Don't You Believe Me?" The man who was on a break came back for old time's sake, with Harry James backing his stock with, "Castle Rock."

I was with the 366th EAB., on an airstrip about thirty miles from Pusan. We were nicknamed SCARWAF (Special Category of Army Regulars with Air Force). Our job was patching potholes for the fly boys, landing on the soles of outdated bombers. We were housed in tents along the airstrip. I was a switchboard operator, along with six other guys to break up the twenty-four hours in the day. I was on duty on the board for six hours followed by thirty-six hours off. That gave me plenty of time to cut hair in the dayroom, where they set up a shop for me. The barber trade let me meet fellows from all over the base. While cutting their hair, I used to sing all the songs my man recorded, and once in a while, I'd do a few others, just to prove I knew there were other singers in the business. The service for me wasn't a hardship. I made the best of it, and with the gift of my hands and the fact I'd been working since I was six, I knew this too shall pass. And pass it did; I was on my way home in February of '53, stopping in Japan to pick up the ship that was going to take me through the Golden Gate, but this time to Frisco, not away from it. I was invited to the NCO Club in Itasuki and got up and sang with an eighteen-piece orchestra that played stock arrangements of big bands from the States.

In 1959, Eisenhower was running out of power. We were ready to follow the path, with Kennedy leading us to a "New Frontier," which could end in an atomic explosion. It would split people like the Adams, the Smiths, the Cohens, and the Kellys. It would split the rainbow of its colors. People were digging bomb shelters and bringing out everything they kept hidden in their cellars.

Tonsorial Artistry

I went into a barbershop across from my home after schools from Monday through Friday. It was 1935 and I was six years old. I was in the first grade. The barber, Mr. Don Conti, and my mother arranged it so I wouldn't be a keyless little boy, waiting for my sister, who was in first-year middle school. The barber gave me chores, like shining shoes, sweeping the floor, keeping the mirrors clean, cleaning the sink, folding towels on the mirror case to shapes of skyscrapers, and running out for cigarettes. There were no machines available; you could buy them loose, two for a penny. What an era to live in. You could buy cigarettes over the counter with just pennies.

For this, he paid me twenty-five cents a week. Well, think about it: a six-year-old boy working in a men's barbershop. By the time I was seven, I knew babes didn't come from heaven. Naturally, my priorities changed. I couldn't wait for the bell to ring at 2:30 p.m. I ran the three blocks from school to the shop. I listened to conversations from all classes of people: tradesmen, doctors, lawyers; everybody got a haircut—even the president of the United States. In fact, a barber was the closest person with a scissors and razor to the president. Haircuts were thirty-five cents, and a shave was fifteen cents. That's why the slogan, "Shave and a hair cut, two bits," became popular in the early twentieth century. The slogan went something like this: "Shave e a haircut two bits, who you gonna marry, Tom Nix?" Tom Nix was a famous cowboy back then.

My first cousin Louie was Don's helper. He did most of the shaves. The start of World War II lifted the Depression, and jobs were on the rise. The economy skyrocketed, and with the change and a sudden disagreement between my cousin and Don, my cousin left for a higher-paying job in the munitions factory. General Motors changed to making airplane parts and producing military autos for the war. No civilian cars were made until after the war.

When I was only twelve years old, Don told me to wash my hands and lather up the next customer for a shave and massage. Now, all of a sudden, I was going to do something different than what I had been doing for the past six years. During those years, I had watched how he operated. He was like a father to me at the time. Don was teaching me how to have a sharp edge on the razors he needed to give a smooth shave. Stretch 'n' Stroke—I was learning the fine points of tonsorial artistry. He offered me five dollars a week. I thought it was a generous offer. To practice, I was shaving labels off of empty bottles not to leave an impression on the bottle and shaving soap off the balloons; if it broke, your hand was too heavy. I was twelve years old when I passed the shaving test. I was allowed to cut my friends' hair on a Sunday. Don gave me a key to his shop at just twelve years old.