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Frankie Vaughan's singing career began during the late 1940s in the Variety theatre. His song and dance routines became a popular stage act and he became renowned for his sexy image and stylish clothes- tail suit, bow tie, top hat and cane. During the 1950s he extended his audience through records. His singles sold well being especially popular with female record buyers. In 1955 he recorded the song that was to become his trademark and theme, 'Give Me The Moonlight' which he generally sang at the end of his high stepping stage act.
Frankie had a very long recording career and could be relied on to reach the chart in most years up to the end of the 1960s. He was also recognised as a fine ambassador for his home city, Liverpool long before the Beatles. He also gave of his efforts freely in aid of his most favoured charity, the 'National Association Of Boys Clubs' for which he was eventually awarded an OBE.
He appeared in several movies and starred alongside Marylin Monroe in 'Let's Make Love' during 1960. However, press stories that have tried to concoct a romantic link between him and the actress are apochryphal in nature.
Frankie Vaughan was one of the greatest British performers of the mid-20th century. He successfully made the transition from the variety stage to films and television and has one of the most enviable histories of record making of the era.
He threw out a leg, chuckled in the middle of a song, made love to Marilyn Monroe on screen and, at one time, was Britain's most successful popular entertainer. Like few others in his walk of life, Frankie Vaughan, was loved for himself as well as for his talent. One of the reasons for Vaughan's huge success was that he was not at all like the crooners of his generation. He had style - he wore a tuxedo on stage, had a shiny top hat and carried a cane. But then what else could he have worn for the number that became his theme song, Give Me The Moonlight? That song, and others like Green Door, Garden Of Eden and Kisses Sweeter Than Wine and then in the 1960s, came Tower Of Strength and Loop De Loop. He also recorded the title numbers of shows such as Cabaret, Mame and, biggest of all, Hello Dolly.
His voice was also different from other pop singers. It wasn't just the chuckle, which, along with the kick, was always the right cue for the girls to scream. You couldn't miss the Liverpool twang. He was born Frank Abelson in Liverpool - "to good parents", he would always say. They struggled constantly to provide a decent home for their son and two daughters. Both seemed to spend every waking hour working - his father as an upholsterer, his mother as a seamstress. As a result, young Frank spent a great deal of time with his grandmother. It was she who, indirectly, was responsible for his change of name. When he first went into show business, his agent, the legendary Billy Marsh, declared that Frank Abelson wasn't going to see his name in lights. Frank remembered that his grandmother always called him in her Russian Jewish accent "my number vawn grandson". So he took her at his word and became Frankie Vaughan.
Before that, he had thought of becoming a boxer. He had taken up the sport at Lancaster Lads Club, the beginning of his life-long connection with the boys' club movement. He also studied at Lancaster College of Art, to which had won a scholarship at the age of 14. There, he sang in the dance band and took part in student rags. His studies were interrupted by national service in the Royal Army Medical Corps, although he spent most of his days boxing and were an army champion. On demob, he became a student teacher at Leeds College of Art.
Soon afterwards, Frankie went to London on the proceeds of a prize to design a furniture exhibition stand. He came second in the radio version of Hughie Green's Opportunity Knocks talent show - working with a girl singer named Irene Griffen. They had no intention of working up a permanent act; it was just the only way that Frankie could get on the show. Then, he had his first big break: at the Hulme Hippodrome, where he topped the bill at the then huge sum of £100 a week. In 1954, he made his first recording for the HMV label, My Sweetie Went Away. He sang with the Ken Mackintosh Band numbers like No Help Wanted and Look At That Girl. He really made it big with a tour of the then vast Moss Empire variety theatre circuit, during which he discovered an old piece of sheet music in a Glasgow shop. It was Give Me The Moonlight. His record of the song sold more than a million copies, establishing him with the young fans that bought the new 45rpm discs.
In 1960, Frankie went to Hollywood to make the film Let's Make Love, with Marilyn Monroe. He had earlier appeared in Arthur Askey's comedy Ramsbottom Rides Again (1956) and a musical, The Lady Is A Square, with Anna Neagle. Monroe tried to entice him into an affair, but he maintained that he loved his wife, Stella, whom he had met at the Locarno ballroom, Leeds, after the war, and that they needed to live in London. Back home, he filled the Talk of the Town theatre restaurant for weeks, and became a sort of elder statesman among British performers. He returned to the venue for years afterwards. In 1965, he was awarded an OBE, and in 1997 a CBE.
In 1985, he had one of his most notable successes - starring in what turned out to be his swansong role, the lead in the musical 42nd Street at Drury Lane. He left the cast after a year at the start of what turned out to be a terminal series of illnesses. He was always sure of his epitaph. "I am lucky to have a talent, lucky to have met such a wonderful girl as my wife Stella, lucky to have such a wonderful family, and lucky to have a job I adore.
He died in 1999
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