The United States is now in the midst of one of those remarkable phenomena of mass hysteria which occur from time to time on this side of the Atlantic. Mr. Frank Sinatra, an amiable young singer of popular songs, is inspiring extraordinary personal devotion on the part of many thousands of young people, and particularly young girls between the ages of, say, twelve and eighteen. The adulation bestowed upon him is similar to that lavished upon Colonel Lindbergh fifteen years ago, Rudolph Valentino a few years earlier, or Admiral Dewey, the hero of Manila Bay, at the turn of the century.
Mr. Sinatra has to be guarded by police whenever he appears in public. Indeed, during the late political campaign he broke up a demonstration for Governor Dewey, the Republican candidate, merely by presenting himself on the sidelines as a spectator. (Since Mr. Sinatra was an ardent supporter of President Roosevelt, some unkind people suggested that he had done this from political motives.) His earnings, including songs on the wireless, gramophone records, appearances in motion pictures and engagements in theatres and night clubs, are in the neighbourhood of $1,250,000 annually. His mail runs into thousands of letters daily; he cannot put his nose out of doors without careful precautions in advance.
THE ╥BOBBY-SOXERS╙
Many thousands of his ╥fans╙ have never seen him in the flesh but have only heard him broadcast or seen him on the films, where, incidentally, he is not particularly successful. Psychologists have written soberly about the hypnotic quality of his voice and the remarkable effect upon susceptible young women. Because he wears a polka-dotted bow tie hundreds of thousands of young people of both sexes wear a similar tie. The teen-age girls who constitute the main part of his audience also wear short white half-hose, and are therefore called ╥bobby-sox girls╙ or, more simply, ╥bobby-soxers.╙
Mr. Sinatra was born and brought up in comparative poverty in the city of Hoboken, New Jersey, just across the river from New York. He had a desultory education and did nothing in particular until about the age of twenty when he began to sing with a band in night clubs and cinema theatres. It is reasonable to suppose that his popularity with young people was at first a fiction invented by his press agent; it is not uncommon for myths of this sort to be set going by those enterprising gentlemen, and young people have even been hired to riot on a small scale in a music-hall or cinema to demonstrate the popularity of a performer. There is no doubt, however, that the matter has now become a genuine phenomenon.
Mr Sinatra has managed to keep his head in the midst of all this adulation. He fully expects that it will last only a few months longer and is reconciled to stepping down from the pedestal. He and his wife (he is happily married and the father of several children) deal gently but firmly with the more pathological of his admirers. While no one relinquishes fame voluntarily, one can imagine that in his case a little less adulation might come as a real relief.
