Bobby Rydell:

Sing a Song of Show Business

by Edwin Miller

Bobby Rydell, a slight-hazel-eyed singer who makes his movie debut this summer in Bye, Bye Birdie, a joyous musical satire about the impact of rock and roll on a small, Midwestern town, faces stardom with a welcoming smile. "I've paid my dues," he remarks, meaning, in the idiom of the pop music world, that he isn't getting something for nothing. He turns to his manager, Frankie day, an inseparable companion of the past six years, and recalls the days when they drove hundreds of miles from one disk jockey to another struggling to plug Bobby's records in the teeth of the inevitable protest: Who's Bobby Rydell? Why should I interview him? "Remember sleeping in that hotel room with the birds flying in and out of the windows?" Bobby asks. "The times when we were on the road all night, washing up in men's room's of radio stations before hitting the deejays?" Bobby's face is pink and rested now, touched with the scent of after-shave talcum, his sandy hair carefully brushed. But he claims to have enjoyed every minute of those frantic days. "I've got a love for show business. I get pleasure from entertaining people and making them laugh. It's my whole life."

His manager, Frankie, dark-haired and earnest, explains that when Bobby says "whole Life," he means that -- "More than most people recognize." For example, Frankie goes on, "We had four days off last Labor Day weekend while we were shooting Bye, Bye Birdie at Columbia Pictures in Hollywood. Bobby was originally supposed to play the Steel Pier in Atlantic City for a week, but when the shooting schedule changed, we had to cut that down. We worked at the studio all day Thursday, until six-thirty, when we went to the airport to catch the night plane east. We arrived at Philadelphia in the morning, changed clothes, drove down to Atlantic City. There are some things he has to do, like having breakfast with the mayor and rehearsing the show. His first performance went on at one o'clock in the afternoon, with repeats all day, five, six seven of them, averaging about eighteen minutes apiece. Between shows he signed autographs, gave interviews, posed for pictures. Bobby's grandparents hadn't seen him for five months; they wanted some time with him. He's pulled from one side, then the other. There are people who gave him encouragement two or three years ago, they want to see him too. If he doesn't, their feelings are hurt. On the fourth day, Monday, he worked as late as he could before taking the night plane back to California, to report at the studio at eight-thirty the next morning for make-up."

Before making the movie, Bobby worried mostly about memorizing his lines. "But when I got started, I found out that it was easy. They tell you the night before, sometimes even a week before, what you're going to work on. You have so much time between scenes that you can even learn your lines on the set. I got along great with Ann-Margret, too. We found we were a lot alike. Both of us loosen up after we know people, then we kid around. I do funny things, little jokes, imitations. I got real relaxed. After we started working, the picture went so well that Columbia expanded our roles, Ann-Margret's and mine; I was originally supposed to work a ten-week schedule; it stretched out to twenty-one.

"Everybody at the studio was great to me. George Sidney, the director, would take me aside and explain everything. There wasn't any pressure at all. It's not like television where everything has to go snap, snap!" Bobby snaps his fingers. "In movies you've got time time do things."

Adapted from the Broadway hit musical Bye, Bye Birdie is the first of seven pictures Bobby is to make for Columbia, one a year on a non-exclusive contract.

"I met a lot of people out on the Coast," Bobby continues enthusiastically. "I dated some girls I met in the apartment house where we were living. I met some others while recording. I usually don't like to date girls in the same 'business.' You get the feeling sometimes that somebody wants to be seen with you because of the publicity. Maybe it's not true, but you can't help feeling that way. I'd rather go out with people who aren't in the business and get away from the photographs and all that stuff. The one thing that you have to be careful about are the fan magazines. One asked me to do a picture story about me on a date; they came up to the suite and shot the pictures. There were probably a dozen people around all the time, but went he pictures came out it looked as if the two of us were alone in the hotel room. You should have seen the letters I got from parents and facts. My grandmother hit the roof when she saw the story. And none of it was true!

"I was so anxious to get back home and see my folks that I was even glad to play the Steel Peer again," he laughs. "It's such a grind that ordinarily I don't look forward to it. Movies are fun. I hope to do a play sometime if everything keeps going so great, but my number one ambition is to be a great nightclub entertainer. I love playing to live audiences in clubs. I owe all that to my father. When he began taking me around when I was a kid, he said, "Just forget everything but what you're doing. Don't worry about people drinking or talking or making noise, just do what you're supposed to do and the rest will take care of itself.' That's the way I am now, none of that stuff bothers me a bit. When I first began performing, I was around seven. I got into it because we got a TV set when I was five. I watched it all the time. I started...comedians. My father took me around Philadelphia for guest appearances.

"Then he took me to audition for Paul Whiteman. He had a TV show that used teen-age talent, and I went on when I was about nine. At his suggestion, I shortened my name from Ridarelli to Rydell. I was with the show for a year or so until it went off. I've still got a great collection of 45 rpm records from when I was on the show. I've got Artie Shaw doing his theme song, "Nightmare." I don't think any of the other kids have that.

"A few years later I was part of a group called Rocco and the Saints. Frankie Avalon was in it too. I was around fifteen then, and we were on the same bill at a New Jersey nightclub as a group called Dave apple and his Applejacks. Frankie Day played bass in that group. It's funny" -- Bobby smiles at his manager -- "the Applejacks were billed at the top, and we brought up the bottom."

Frankie didn't see Bobby until one day when it rained so hard that he stayed in the club between shows. "Bobby caught my eye," Frankie says, "because of his great talent. He had it, and I wanted to work with him. Until then, I'd been happy doing what I was doing as a musician. I thought I would be doing the same thing for the rest of my life." Frankie approached Bobby's parents and secured permission to teak over as his manager. He began teaching him voice projection and how to hold an audience....

"They wouldn't sign me," Bobby exclaims. "Then we wanted to set up our own company, but that fell apart. Finally, we got together with Cameo Records, with whom I've been ever since. We spent the next two or three years going on promotion trips all thought hate Middle West and New England, plugging sides like Please Don't be Mad; All I want Is you; For You, For You; Kissin' Time.You remember that old Pontiac?"

Frankie remembers. "We did things that were crazy when you look back at them, but it worked out. Every other week, Bobby used to take Friday and Monday off from school. I worked it out with his teachers at Bishop Neumann High School in Philadelphia on the basis of his doing the work before he went, and we'd drive all night and go around to the different disk jockeys. The tires were worn down all the way, I'd have about three dollars in my pocket, but off we'd go. We used to hit the deejays on the weekends; during the week I'd try to make some money."

Within a couple of years, Bobby's records began to sell and he became a local celebrity. (As of this writing he has made eight albums on the cameo label; the movie sound track of Bye,Bye Birdie will be issued by RCA Victor.) He noticed during his personal appearances that "a lot of the kids seemed to like the 'wow-wows' and 'ha has' that gave me my special sound." He adds, "When I went to a movie or walked down the street, people turned to stare at me. It made em feel kind of weird."

"But Bobby's career hasn't shot up like a rocket," Frankie says. "He's had a steady, sold rise. There's a foundation under it. I didn't want to do anything too rapidly. His nightclub career was very carefully planned. I got the best talent in the business to teach him how to move, to work out his arrangements, to write special material. But he's a success not because of a smart manager or a good arranger or anything like that; it's mainly because he's got talent."

Frankie adds, "Another thing hat has helped is that Pennsylvania and California are the only two states in the union where the court appoints a guardian to oversee all the income until the performer comes of age. It has taken all the responsibility off my shoulders. I'm setting up a business manager and all the rest of it. When he comes of age and the time for the shift comes, it will be a smooth transition.

"I've surrounded Bobby with good people who have pleasant personalities. They've got to be right; otherwise he won't be right. It affects you, the people around you. But when you live with one another so closely, things are bound to get frayed at the edges once in awhile. It's been plenty rough on occasion, but the thing that has saved us all has been Bobby's father. He's always been there to smooth things out when it's come to the screaming stage, and it has. I've never seen Bobby's father angry or even ruffled."

Bobby says, "My father was a foreman in a machinist shop for twenty years, but he's through now. I make enough to take care of things. last year he went on as my road manager. He's forty-seven or eight, I guess, but he looks about thirty. We're like brothers. Sometimes he travels with me, but my mother usually stays at home. We live with my grandparents. After I'm twenty-one (this April 26), I want to buy a house for all of us."

Bobby's preliminary build-up was so impressive that New York's Copacabana signed him to appear even before his nightclub act (built on his impersonations, his drums and his vocals) had worked its way around the country. "My voice is baritone now, but in the beginning it was much higher," Bobby says. "I used to do imitations of all sorts of people from Sammy Davis, JR. on, ending up with Johnnie Ray's Little White Cloud That Cried. As my voice deepened, I gradually shifted over from imitations to singing."

Now TV personalities like Red Skelton, Perry Como, Jack Benny and Dick Clark are all requesting Bobby Rydell as a guest star -- and he recently filmed the pilot show for his own TV series, Rockabye the Infantry.The theater beckoned too.

"About a year and a half ago," Frankie says, "we were in Chicago and we got a wire to hop a plane and fly to New York immediately for an audition. We didn't know what it was all about. We got off the plane and went tot he theater; they said not to worry, all they wanted was to have Bobby sing some songs onstage with the piano. The lights were up and I couldn't even see who was in the audience. When it was over, Jule Styne, the producer of...Gypsy, came up and put his arms around Bobby. He was being auditioned for Do Re Mi, A Phil Silvers musical. They wanted him for an eighteen-month contract. But it was the wrong thing to do. It would have tied him up just as he was picking up steam and I turned it down. Later they rewrote the part for a girl.

"Bobby's contract with Columbia says that he doesn't have to do any juvenile delinquent or rock and roll pictures. It's a kind of script approval. When Birdie came along, that seemed just right for his first picture. Janet Leigh, Dick Van Dyke, Ann-Margret, George Sidney, Onna White, the choreographer--"

Bobby cuts in, "I don't do any tap dancing or anything like that, but Onna taught me how to move, loosened me up."

"--Johnny Green in charge of the music, top names, top talent," Frankie continues. "They may end up with a bomb, but at least we stand a chance."

In the past several years, Bobby, who still drops in on disk jockeys around the country, has traveled from coast to coast for one-night stands and played overseas engagements both in Europe and the Far East. "I loved Hong Kong," he says, "but the place I like best of all is Copenhagen. It's great! People ask me why and I don't know. I was on a bill there in which I followed some guy with a singing motorcycle." He laughs. "He'd bring the cycle on and gun the engine so you could pick out a melody. Denmark is a terrific country. I get around a little and do some sightseeing when I'm touring."

Frankie says thoughtfully, "It's been a four-pronged push -- records, nightclubs, TV and acting in movies, and it seems to be working out okay. There are only a few people who have made the transition from a teenage audience to an adult audience without losing the teenagers. Elvis Presley is one; he's a phenomenon of show business. Bobby Darin has lost the teenage audience; now he's trying to get it back. I think Bobby Rydell will be able to make the transition too. You know," he adds, "I believe that there is an enormous pool of talent everywhere that is never tapped. In Philadelphia, there is a great deal of musical exposure -- nightclubs, Dick Clark's show, things like that -- enough exposure to give the talent, always there, a chance. Look at the people who have come from Philadelphia, from Mario Lanza and Eddie Fisher to Buddy Greco, Frankie Avalon and Bobby.

"I've had college," he continues, "so I'm a little prepared for some of this. But I've found that I've had to grow along with Bobby to meet all the things that have come up and have had to be taken care of You know, there's a very thin line between being a genius and being an idiot. Things have worked out pretty well, but it could just have easily gone the other way. More easily, in fact."

Bobby adds, "Yeah, when you've made it the hard way, and out your time in, if you are lucky enough to be successful, it doesn't go to your head the way it does with some people.

"I know what it's like."

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