"My Father Came from Italy"

Bow-tied, boyish Frank Sinatra gave his listeners just what they had tuned in for: he mooned his way through My Melancholy Baby and I Fall in Love Too Easily. Then, as is his custom, the swoonmaster turned schoolmaster to lecture his charges about a "very, very important subject known as tolerance." The subject seemed to have quite a lot to do with Frankie, too. He gave his bobbysox listeners an earnest preview of a film short he had just made, and of the kind of thing they can expect from him every few weeks in his Old Gold radio show (CBS, Wed., 9 p.m., E.W.T.):

Sinatra comes upon a group of kids chasing a Jewish boy named Danny, because, as Danny says: "I got a different religion." Sinatra, taking charge, convinces Tommy, one of the tormentors, that the blood plasma Danny's father gave may have saved the life of Tommy's G.I. dad. Explains Sinatra: "Don't you get what I'm telling you? Religion doesn't make any real difference, except to a Nazi or a dope. . . . My father came from Italy. But I'm an American and should I hate your father, Tommy, because he came from Ireland or France or Russia? Wouldn't I be a fathead?"

Sinatra, now determined to give his following something besides a swoon, has also gone to work on fellow performers. He has persuaded Comic Danny Kaye, Dancer Gene Kelly and Crooner Bing Crosby to make movie shorts along the same lines. Said he last week: "I have never believed in anything so zealously in all my life."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.