Another great one gone

Someone once said, “Vic Damone is the kind of performer who comes along once in a lifetime. Fortunately, he came along in our lifetime.”

Show-biz hyperbole aside, I am glad that was around during the days of classic entertainers such as Vic Damone, who died the other day at 89, and Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis, Jr., Perry Como and Matt Monro.

These were men who came from the tradition of dressing up a little nice for an audience (ya listening, Keith Urban?) and singing the songs of the Great American Songbook for appreciative audiences on radio, television, and in live performances and movies.

One show-bizzy tradition that seems to be dying is people changing their name to something more mainstream.  For instance, Damone was born Vito Farinola, and think about that one second. Those two words sound like what a smooth crooner such as he would sing to warm up before a show..."VEEEEEEEto FaaaaaarinOOOOOOOOOla!"

Show business was good to old Vic, taking him down many roads, and down the aisle to the altar five times (two notable brides: Pier Angeli and Diahann Carroll).   

Hit songs like “In the Still of the Night,” “You’d Be So Easy to Love,” “Swingin' Down The Lane,” and “Come Rain or Come Shine” put bread and butter on his table for years, and yet, there was something else he wanted to do, besides get married all the time and be a handsome singing idol.

You see, his father had been an electrician, but young Vic had to drop out of high school to support the family when his father became disabled. He got a job as an elevator operator and usher at a theatre in his native New York City, where he once gave Perry Como a lift in the lift, and Como reciprocated by giving Damone an endorsement.

He won on the Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts show, which was sort of like "The Voice" back in the day, except the judges didn't look like they had just come in from mowing the lawn.

He also got a boost from Milton Berle, and became the singer for the Stan Kenton Orchestra before going solo for records, club dates and TV shows.

Two years of service in the Army during the Korean War did not slow him, and he came back to greater success, and stayed at or near the top of his profession through the multiple marriages, an unpleasant encounter with a mob boss who thought it unwise for Vic to break up with the mobster's daughter (and dangled him out a hotel window until capo di tutti capo Frank Costello intervened), giving up Roman Catholicism to convert to the Bahá'í Faith, and a final marriage to the woman who founded the ladies' clothing firm Jones New York.

But remember, he had had to drop out of Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, and it always got under his skin that he had not finished high school, so in 1997, at the age of 69, he completed his course work and earned that high school diploma.

Just to remind us all, it's never too late.