This week the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. will open a new exhibit called “Sinatra at 100″ honoring Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthday last December 12. The National Museum of American history will surely put up a classy display, but I seriously doubt that our fair city will be mentioned at all… but we should be.
Located at 135 N. Illinois Street there once stood a theatre with as rich a pop-culture history as any in Indianapolis. When the Lyric Theatre opened in February of 1906, it was basically a room filled with about 200 folding chairs arranged in rows. A carbon arc light projector rested on a tripod in the rear of the theatre. Early projectors simply dumped the projected film into a basket on the floor. Projectors were hand cranked, and the projectionist could speed up or slow down the action on the screen by “over-cranking” or “under-cranking.”
The film stock itself was made from nitrocellulose, a chemical cousin to explosives used by the military in World War I. The highly flammable film and the extremely hot light source meant that fire was a very real threat. In fact, the incidence of projector-related fires over the first ten years of movie houses produced some of the worst tragedies in our country’s history. It was for this reason that six years later a larger 1,400 seat Lyric Theatre was built on the property.
The new Lyric was constructed by the Central Amusement Co. for $75.000, built by the Halstead-Moore Co. and designed by architect Herman L. Bass, who designed Indianapolis Motor Speedway co-founder James A. Allison’s mansion, now on the campus of Marian University. This upgrade included fireproof materials inside and exterior walls of concrete, steel and artistic brick accented by white terra-cotta trim.
On April 20, 1919, the Lyric was again closed for remodeling, this design courtesy architect Kurt Vonnegut Sr., a name that still resonates through town to this day. This facelift left only three original walls standing and created a new lobby on the south. The stage that originally faced west now faced south. It had its grand reopening on September 1, 1919.
The Lyric underwent its last major remodel in 1926, adding state-of-the art air conditioning and modern stage lighting systems. This remodel cost $185,000 and included construction of a new four-story building featuring a new main entrance, and a lobby with executive offices above.
The new Lyric, with its shiny marble and gold lobby lined with French mirrors and six French crystal chandeliers, was considered to be one of the finest theaters in Indiana. Three hundred more seats were added as was a new basement that housed rehearsal areas and dressing rooms named for cities on its doors. A new marquee was added above the front door. At 10 feet high, 50 feet long and 16 feet deep, it held up to 440 letters and was said to be the largest of its kind in the state. The following year, a new Marr-Colton pipe organ was added at a cost of $30,000, which, like the marquee, was the largest in the state.
The Lyric began life showing films scored with music provided by live musicians. Then came vaudeville, talkies and finally big screen epics. World War I led to the Roaring Twenties, then to the Great Depression and into the gangster era — and Hoosier outlaw roots extended to the doorway of the Lyric itself. The Lyric survived the Depression by featuring an eclectic mix of movies, vaudeville acts, stage shows and live musicals.
A week after the death of Hoosier Public Enemy # 1 John Dillinger on July 2, 1934, his family signed a 5-month vaudeville contract at the Lyric theatre that expired on New Years Eve. Crowds mobbed the theatre to hear stories from, and ask questions of, John Dillinger, Sr. about his famous outlaw son. The 15-minute show was billed as “Crime doesn’t pay” despite the fact that it cost patrons an extra 15 cents to see it. Dillinger Sr. and his sister Audrey fielded questions from the crowd. The show traveled to the Great Lakes, Texas Centennial and San Diego Expositions and the Chicago World’s Fair, which gangster Dillinger had famously visited while alive. Rumor persists that the Lyric was also a favorite hangout for John Dillinger. After all, everyone knows that Dillinger died outside of a Chicago movie theatre.
Edgar Bergen (only weeks before he introduced his “dummy” Charlie McCarthy) played the Lyric in 1934 in a vaudeville act that included a trio of sisters calling themselves the “Queens of Harmony” who later became known as The Andrews Sisters. Red Skelton was a 1930s performer at the Lyric known as “The Canadian Comic” despite the fact that he was a Hoosier born in Vincennes. Hoagy Carmichael was a regular. The standard 1930s Era Lyric theatre contract awarded “Fifty percent (50%) of gross receipts after first dollar.” Ticket prices in 1936 were “25 cents to 6 p.m.- 40 cents on lower floor at night and 30 cents in balcony week days, and Saturday. On Sunday, 30 cents in balcony and 40 cents on lower floor all day.”
The Lyric’s next step towards pop culture immortality came on February 2, 1940 when the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra came to town. Dorsey began his career in a Big Band with his brother Jimmy in the late 1920s. That band also included Glenn Miller. Dorsey had a reputation for being a micromanaging perfectionist with a volatile temper. He often fired musicians based on his mood, only to rehire them a short time later. Dorsey had a well-deserved reputation for raiding other bands for talent. If he admired a vocalist, musician or arranger, he thought nothing of taking over their contracts and careers.
In November 1939 a relatively unknown “skinny kid with big ears” from Hoboken, New Jersey signed on as the lead singer of the Tommy Dorsey band. Frank Sinatra signed a contract with Dorsey for $125 a week at Palmer House in Chicago, where Ole Blue Eyes was appearing with the Harry James Orchestra. Mysteriously, but not unsurprisingly, Harry James agreed to release Sinatra from his contract — an event that would come back to haunt Dorsey a couple years later.
Dorsey was a major influence on Sinatra and quickly became a father figure. Sinatra copied Dorsey’s mannerisms and often claimed that he learned breath control from watching Dorsey play trombone. He made Dorsey the godfather of his daughter Nancy in June 1940. Sinatra later said that “The only two people I’ve ever been afraid of are my mother and Tommy Dorsey”.
From February 2-8, 1940, when the Dorsey band opened at the Lyric, the theater’s ad in the Indianapolis Star listed Tommy’s name in inch-high letters. At the bottom, in 1/8-inch type, was a listing for “Frank Sinatra, Romantic Virtuoso.” The songs he sang during that week of shows on the eve of World War II are lost to the pages of history. But we do know that Frank Sinatra made 80 recordings in 2 years with the Dorsey band.
By May 1941, Sinatra topped the male singer polls in Billboard and Down Beat magazines, becoming the world’s first rock star. His appeal to bobby-soxers created pop music and opened up a whole new market for record companies, which had been marketing primarily to adults. The phenomenon would become officially known as “Sinatramania.” Manic female fans often wrote Sinatra’s song titles on their clothing, bribed hotel maids for an opportunity to touch his bed, and chased the young star, often stealing clothing he was wearing, usually his bow-tie.
By 1942, Sinatra believed he needed to go solo, with an insatiable desire to compete with Bing Crosby, his childhood idol. Sinatra grew up with a picture of Crosby in his bedroom, and in 1935 young Frankie met his idol briefly backstage at a Newark club. Within a decade, Sinatra would be contending for Crosby’s throne. A series of appearances at New York’s Paramount Theatre in December 1942 established Sinatra as the hot new star. When Sinatra sang, young girls in the audience swooned, screaming so loud that it drowned out the orchestra. The girls never swooned and screamed when Bing Crosby sang.
Sinatra decided early not merely to imitate Crosby, but to develop his own style. In a 1965 article, Sinatra explained: “When I started singing in the mid-1930s everybody was trying to copy the Crosby style — the casual kind of raspy sound in the throat. Bing was on top, and a bunch of us … were trying to break in. It occurred to me that maybe the world didn’t need another Crosby. I decided to experiment a little and come up with something different.”
Frank’s singing evoked frailty, innocence and vulnerability and inflamed the passions of his young female fans. Some older listeners, however, rejected Sinatra’s gentle sighing, moaning and cooing as not real singing. Crosby joked: “Frank Sinatra is the kind of singer who comes along once in a lifetime — but why did it have to be my lifetime!”
Sinatra was hamstrung by his contract with the Dorsey band, which gave Dorsey 43 percent of Frank’s lifetime earnings in the entertainment industry. On September 3, 1942, Dorsey famously bid farewell to Sinatra by telling Frankie, “I hope you fall on your ass.” Rumors began spreading in newspapers that Sinatra’s mobster godfather, Willie Moretti, coerced Dorsey to let Sinatra out of his contract for a few thousand dollars by holding a gun to Tommy’s head and telling him that “either your signature or your brains will be on this contract.” Apparently, Sinatra made him an “offer he could not refuse.” Yes, that famous scene in the Godfather is based on this encounter.
Dorsey died in 1956, but not before telling the press this of his one time protege: “He’s the most fascinating man in the world, but don’t put your hand in the cage.” Regardless of the way it ended between the duo, it all began at the Lyric Theatre in Indianapolis.
If you are interested in learning more about the Lyric and other legendary Circle City theatres, I highly recommend you read The Golden Age of Indianapolis Theaters (IU Press) by Howard Caldwell, former WRTV-Channel 6 anchor and friend of Irvington.
Next Week: Part II- The Lyric Theatre.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest book is “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View.” Contact directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
