If you can’t remember a time when Frankie Avalon wasn’t a part of your life, you aren’t alone. This talented performer can look back on a career that spans three generations of music, television and motion pictures, which he feels is due primarily to the loyalty and trust of his audience.
Avalon’s years as a “Teenage Idol” have been succeeded by maturity and professionalism. He is currently one of the busiest nightclub performers in the country, playing the nation's finest supper clubs and headlining top hotel main rooms in Las Vegas, Nev. His motion picture career has already spanned some thirty films.
Frankie was born in Philadelphia, Penn., on September 18, 1940.
“It seems like every young kid in Philadelphia wanted to be a singer," Avalon recalls. “I started as a musician…a trumpet player in the beginning. But, when I picked up the paper one day and read about Jimmy Darren, who was from my own neighborhood and school, making a successful career for himself, I decided that I could do it just as well.”
Even before the age of ten, Avalon seized every opportunity to enter local amateur contests, winning one after another. On his own initiative, Frankie began taking lessons and continued his musical studies through the years that followed. One of his instructors, a member of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, volunteered to teach the young trumpet virtuoso after hearing him play. Although he downplays the fact, Frankie Avalon was a child prodigy who was good enough to make guest appearances as a trumpet player on The Perry Como and Jackie Gleeson television shows.
Avalon has a long string of Gold Record Million-Seller singles and albums. In 1959 alone, Frankie had six solid hits that were in the top 40 and his music became one of the defining sounds of “Pre-Beatles” Rock n Roll.
Never one to settle for one career, Avalon’s 30 motion picture credits are amazing. His starring roles in the highly successful Beach Party film series are, perhaps, quickest to recall. They include Beach Party, Muscle Beach Party, Beach Blanket Bingo, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, Bikini Beach and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. However, Avalon, who studied with Wynn Handman in New York, N.Y., and Estelle Harmon in Los Angeles, Cali., has always been most proud of his dramatic roles in The Dark, The Alamo, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Guns of the Timberland and his comedic talent in Skidoo, Sail a Crooked Ship, I’ll Take Sweden, Ski Party and Sergeant Deadhead. In his film for Columbia Pictures,The Take, co-starring Billy Dee Williams, Eddie Albert and Vic Marrow, Avalon showed, not only his dramatic ability, but his capacity for working “against type."
Avalon loves making movies, but his soul is fed by live audiences. Because of this, his nightclub career has taken him around the world, headlining the finest supper clubs and niteries. He has played to sold-out houses in the best rooms in every major city in America, including The Fontainebleau and Eden Roc Hotels in Miami Beach, Fla., and both the Rainbow Grill and Copacabana in New York. Avalon is of worldwide renown, and his appearance at the International Festival of Stars in Romania marked only the second time that an entertainer from the United States had performed in that Iron Curtain country since World War II, the other performer being Louis Armstrong.
In addition to working six months out of the year in nightclubs, Frankie is a familiar face to television viewers, having appeared on just about every top variety show, guest-starring on numerous dramatic series and starring in several of his own specials.
Among the many honors that have been bestowed upon this multi-faceted star, the ones that stand out are The Disk Jockey’s Association Selection as “King of Song” (1959), winner of Photoplay Magazines Gold Award as “Most Popular Vocalist” (1959), selection by Box Office Magazine as one of the “Top Three Young Male Stars” at the motion picture box office (1964) and named by Film Daily as one of the “Five Best Young Actors of the Year” (1964). His 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was an acknowledgement of Avalon’s talent by his peers and those whose music he has influenced.
It is widely held that the character of Teen Angel in the Broadway Show Grease was patterned after the effect that Frankie had on teen-aged girls. When the movie Grease was made, it was almost unthinkable that anyone else would play the part. Frankie appeared and sang “Beauty School Dropout.” This cameo was considered one of the highlights of the movie.
Although it would take many pages to cover, the multiple and varied entertainment world accomplishments of Frankie Avalon can be summed up in one short sentence: “He is one of Hollywood’s most prolific fathers.”
Specifically, Frankie and his wife, Kay, married in January of 1963 and are the parents of four sons and four daughters. In order of their appearance are: Frankie Jr., Tony, Dina, Laura, Joe, Nick, Kathryn and Carla. The family has lived in a sprawling ranch style home in beautiful San Fernando Valley, Cali., where Frankie and Kay are now enjoying the next generation of Avalons appearing on the scene.
In recent years, Frankie has become involved with the National Arthritis Foundation as a national ambassador, spent countless hours as the New York host for the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon and now heads his own company, Frankie Avalon Venus, Ltd., specializing in natural health products.
Frankie Avalon, singer, musician, actor, businessman and family man proves that sometimes the good guy really does win.
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