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All the things you are : the life of Tony Bennett
The first complete biography of singing legend Tony Bennet. Among America's greatest entertainers such as Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Ray Charles, and Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennett alone is still here and at the top of his game. For the first time, All the Things You Are tells the incredible story of Bennett's life and sixty-year career, from his impoverished New York City childhood through his first chart-topping hits, from liberating a concentration camp to his civil rights struggles, from his devastating personal and career battles and addiction in the 1970's to his stunning comeback and emergence as a musical statesman, America's troubadour, role model and mentor, and unmatched interpreter of the American songbook. Takes a candid, unvarnished look at the amazing life of one of America's most enduring musical icons. Based on dozens of author interviews with Bennett's family members,agents, musicians, composers and managers, and experts on the last fifty years of popular music. Filled with stories involving leading figures and entertainers of the twentieth-century, including Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fiorello LaGuardia, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ray Charles, Dean Martin, Billie Holliday, and more. Whether you've been a Tony Bennett fan for decades or are just discovering him, this book will deepen your understanding of this hugely gifted entertainer and his music.
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Bobby Darin
A multilayered portrait of this brash, gifted artist,
whose restless voice and spirit seem as alive today as
ever.
A performer who rivaled Sinatra, Bobby Darin rose from dire
poverty to become one of the biggest stars of his generation.
Dogged by chronic illness, he knew that time was not on his
side, and so, in a career full of dizzying twists and turns, he
did it all, moving from teen idol to Vegas song-and-dance man,
from hipster to folkie and back. In this biography, David
Evanier offers a multilayered portrait of this brash, gifted
artist, including the dark side of his celebrated marriage to
America's sweetheart, Sandra Dee, and the incredible family
secret that tore him apart at the end.
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THE NERVE OF A BURGLAR
At 12, Bobby was admitted to one of the most prestigious high schools in New York, a school for “brains”—the Bronx High School of Science. Bobby and his best friend, John Bravo, had been advised to go there by guidance counselors at Clark Junior High. Bobby fared badly, although in the long run he would find a group of friends with whom he would bond for many years.
Bobby felt painfully apart and different at Bronx Science. An overwhelming majority of the students were Jewish and from upwardly mobile homes, financially far better off than his family, and intellectually
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THE HIDDEN CHILD
Bobby’s grandmother, Vivian Fern Walden, who called herself Polly, was a thrush. Saverio “Sam” Cassotto, his grandfather, was a small-time thug. Sam’s family was part of the wave of Italian Immigration between 1900 and 1910, when more than two million men, women, and children came to the United States from Italy. Sam’s father, a tailor, had opened a shop in Harlem to raise the money to bring his wife, daughter, and son to New York.
Italians, with their dark skins, at that time were regarded as one step above Negroes. Italian-American families averaged annual earnings of $688, insufficient to support
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A HIGHER CALLING
On March 13, 1963, Bobby opened a successful engagement at Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe. Bobby’s country-pop song “You’re the Reason I’m Living” reached No. 3 on the charts on March 23. But Bobby’s personal life was not going well. The marriage had seemed to go downhill from the start. Sandra wanted Bobby for herself. She didn’t want his old friends around. She didn’t want him to perform in nightclubs.
“When Bobby married Sandra, I didn’t get to see him much anymore,” Frankie Avalon remembers. “We were like the Dead End Kids to her, especially Charlie Maffia. Charlie was at the
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ROMAN CANDLE
Bobby would experience extraordinary triumphs and defeats, frightening illnesses, and amazing recoveries and comebacks in the next period of his life. He would bound back with a superhuman resilience. His was a flame that burned very brightly, like a roman candle that burns the brightest before it extinguishes itself.
Bobby’s love life was compartmentalized among his real relationships, his flings with glamorous celebrities, his fantasies and daydreams, and a private swinging side. Like everything else he did, Bobby’s sexual appetite was gargantuan. “Hey, it didn’t matter what,” a friend says, “he liked it. Watch, not watch, listen. He’d listen to
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A “SCRAWNY THING”
Polly was almost 50 when Bobby was born in 1936. For the next 32 years, Bobby would look upon her as his mother and Nina as his sister.
Polly and Nina settled down with Bobby in the Harlem apartment. It was a third-floor walk-up consisting of three rooms: a kitchen, living room, and bedroom joined by a long hall. Bobby’s crib was a drawer.
In May of 1937, Nina met Charlie Maffia—that was really his name—at a dance. Charlie was a handsome, sturdy, likeable Italian man and a terrific dancer. He was a jack-of-all-trades who worked at the
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WHIRLING DERVISH
When Nina thought that Bobby was giving serious consideration to carrying on RFK’s legacy by running for office himself in 1968, she became frightened that Bobby’s opponents would find out the truth about his birth and exploit the information to destroy him. She called Bobby at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where he was appearing, and told him there was something of urgent importance that she had to tell him in person. Nina and Vee drove to meet Bobby at the Barclay Hotel in Philadelphia. Nina went up to his room, while Vee waited in the lobby.
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REVISED INTRODUCTION
In the fall of 2024, twenty years after I first published this biography of Bobby Darin, the press reported that Jonathan Groff would star on Broadway in a musical about Darin, Just in Time. It was not a surprise. Bobby’s music is still everywhere, timeless, and uncannily fresh. Hard as it is to believe, he left us in 1973 at the age of thirty-seven. He had been a chart-topping, multimillion-selling, Grammy Award—winning singer-songwriter, a Golden Globe—winning actor, and a dedicated political activist. He continues to be played more now than when he was alive—and he was a
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