Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories.
–––
It was sometime in the fall of 1940, when I was eight years old, that
my teenage sister, Maryann, took me to a movie at the Avalon Theater. She and a lot of her high school girlfriends had been waiting for a movie to come to Marysville for weeks. The movie featured a new male singer named Frank Sinatra. It was his first full length film.
For years, I think the most popular male vocalist had been Bing Crosby, but in 1940, things were changing, especially among teenage girls. I think the lion’s share of Marysville’s teenage girls were in the Avalon Theater that night.
All this happened more than 80 years ago, so I had forgotten a lot of the details. But then something happened recently that brought it all back to me. You see, I belong to a book club that sends me audio books. I get a lot of biographies from them, and not long ago I got a biography of Frank Sinatra.
Oh boy, that book brought back a flood of memories of that night in 1940. The name of that movie was “Las Vegas Nights,” and the song he sang was “I’ll Never Smile Again.” As soon as I heard it, I could remember a lot of details about that night in the theater.
I could remember, for example, that as soon as Frank started singing, all those teenage girls started giggling, tittering and swooning. I had never before seen anything quite like that. One girl who sat behind us, was so emotional she was actually crying.
Frank was 25 years old, but he looked even younger. And he was almost as skinny as I was. But he held his audience in the palm of his hand. When I saw how all those girls reacted to him, I thought maybe I would become a singer myself when I got older.
I have a lot of good memories of the Avalon Theater: Saturday “double feature” matinees, New Year’s Eve movies, Bank Night, Screeno and things like that. But I don’t think any of those memories are as vivid as the night Frank Sinatra made all those Marysville teenage girls go bananas. It was really something to see.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at williamboyd514@gmail.com