When I was a new critic/reporter on the music beat at Long Island's Newsday, then the largest and most influential suburban newspaper in the country, my editor noticed my schedule was quiet one August week. And Frank Sinatra was turning 65, which was old in those days! So he assigned me to spend a week at the NY Library of Performing Art…
When I was a new critic/reporter on the music beat at Long Island's Newsday, then the largest and most influential suburban newspaper in the country, my editor noticed my schedule was quiet one August week. And Frank Sinatra was turning 65, which was old in those days! So he assigned me to spend a week at the NY Library of Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, which is still there, and research and write an advance obituary appreciation of Frank Sinatra. It had newspaper clippings and microfilm going back to the 1920 and 1930s. It not only honed my research skills, but made me the No. 1 writer on the Sinatra beat, and I saw him perform every time he was in New York. You do data, in which every item is essential to your calculations. Journalists and biographers sift and choose, sift and choose. So I'm not surprised even your expert witnesses never came across the school assembly your grandmother no doubt saw. There was no mass media besides radio and (local) newspapers then, so it was easy to fall through the cracks, and even the most dedicated biographer might have found it non-essential. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Lincoln Center library of performing arts had that clipping. They collected everything. BTW, my daughter graduated from the Frank Sinatra H.S. of the Arts in Astoria, Queens, in 2012. The school was founded by Tony Bennett. In 2013 or the next year, Bennett invited a friend of his to do an assembly performance at the school: Paul McCartney. My daughter was pissed she missed this because she was already in college. But I'm sure this won't show up even in the most complete biography of McCartney, unless it is a compendium of every performance he ever made, every day of his life. A great piece of detective work, btw, Chris.
I lived in Astoria two blocks from that HS in the early 2010s. I remember kicking myself that Paul had performed so close to me and I had missed it (tho as I recall it was a total surprise, so everyone except those students missed it)
When I was a new critic/reporter on the music beat at Long Island's Newsday, then the largest and most influential suburban newspaper in the country, my editor noticed my schedule was quiet one August week. And Frank Sinatra was turning 65, which was old in those days! So he assigned me to spend a week at the NY Library of Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, which is still there, and research and write an advance obituary appreciation of Frank Sinatra. It had newspaper clippings and microfilm going back to the 1920 and 1930s. It not only honed my research skills, but made me the No. 1 writer on the Sinatra beat, and I saw him perform every time he was in New York. You do data, in which every item is essential to your calculations. Journalists and biographers sift and choose, sift and choose. So I'm not surprised even your expert witnesses never came across the school assembly your grandmother no doubt saw. There was no mass media besides radio and (local) newspapers then, so it was easy to fall through the cracks, and even the most dedicated biographer might have found it non-essential. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Lincoln Center library of performing arts had that clipping. They collected everything. BTW, my daughter graduated from the Frank Sinatra H.S. of the Arts in Astoria, Queens, in 2012. The school was founded by Tony Bennett. In 2013 or the next year, Bennett invited a friend of his to do an assembly performance at the school: Paul McCartney. My daughter was pissed she missed this because she was already in college. But I'm sure this won't show up even in the most complete biography of McCartney, unless it is a compendium of every performance he ever made, every day of his life. A great piece of detective work, btw, Chris.
I lived in Astoria two blocks from that HS in the early 2010s. I remember kicking myself that Paul had performed so close to me and I had missed it (tho as I recall it was a total surprise, so everyone except those students missed it)