He was a singer, radio and TV presenter and actor born Vito Farinola in Brooklyn, New York into a family where his mother was a piano teacher and his father was an electrician who also played the guitar.
Singing from around the age of two, he was a member of the choir of St. Finbar’s Church in Brooklyn and after being inspired by Frank Sinatra he started to have voice lessons. Unfortunately his father had an accident at work and so he had to leave high school, which later awarded him his diploma with credits for life experience in 1997.
He got a job at the Paramount Theater in Manhattan as an elevator operator and usher While working at the hotel he met the singer Perry Como and sang for him, wanting his opinion of whether he should continue his singing lessons. He was so impressed that he sent him to a bandleader that performed locally and it was around then that he decided to change to his mother’s maiden name and call himself Vic Damone. He made his professional debut that year when he appeared as a guest on the Gloom Dodgers radio show.
In 1947 he became the winner of Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts show where he carried on as a regular part of the show. He also began working at night clubs through his meeting up with Milton Berle.
By the end of 1947 Mercury Records had given him a contract and his first two single releases, “I Have But One Heart” and “You Do”, both made it to No. 7 on the Billboard chart. This success was regularly repeated and by 1948 he was hosting his Saturday Night Serenade radio show.
The 1950s came along and with his current popularity he was given roles in the films Rich, Young and Pretty and The Strip in 1951. That same year he made sure to record several songs that could be released while he was undertaking his military service with the United States Army from then until 1953, with one of his co-servicemen was Johnny Cash.
After completing his military duties and returning to civilian life he married the actress Pier Angeli, with whom he had his son Perry. He then took on a further two roles in the 1954 movies Athena and Deep In My Heart. The next year he starred in Kismet and Hit the Deck, but only managed one chart song that year which was “Por Favor”.
In 1956 he decided to change record labels and moved to Columbia Records with whom he had further hits that included “An Affair to Remember” and “On the Street Where You Live”. He also released the albums Angela Mia, Closer Than a Kiss, On the Swingin’ Side, That Towering Feeling, This Game of Love and Young and Lively from 1957 to 1961 which was the year he moved to Capitol Records to make up for the loss of one of their main acts, Frank Sinatra. He and Pier divorced in 1958 and in 1963 he married Judith Rawlins, with whom he had three daughters.
Although only staying at Capitol Records for four years until 1965 he released the albums The Lively Ones, Linger Awhile with Vic Damone, The Liveliest, My Baby Loves to Swing, On the Street Where You Live and Strange Enchantment. Also during two of the summers he was with them he had his own NBC TV series The Lively Ones which were variety shows that had guest performances by many of the top artists of the day. He also went on to make appearances in The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Judy Garland Show and appear at the 1964 Indianapolis 500 to perform “Back Home Again in Indiana”. He moved to Warner Bros. Records in 1965.
His time with Warner Bros. saw him achieving a hit with “You Were Only Fooling (While I Was Falling In Love)” and releasing Country Love Songs and You Were Only Fooling.
In 1966 he moved labels once again when he went to RCA Victor Records where he released The Damone Type of Thing, On the South Side of Chicago, Stay With Me and Why I Can’t Walk Away. The next year he hosted The Dean Martin Summer Show and in 1969 his cover of “To Make a Big Man Cry” became his last single to enter a chart in the US.
Going into the 1970s he married the entertainer Becky Ann Jones in 1971 and became a casino performer in Las Vegas and later in the decade he embarked on a series of tours in the US and UK and recorded further albums for RCA. He continued recording right into the new millennium and after releasing his final album in 2002 it was estimated that he had recorded in excess of 2000 songs.
He and Becky Ann were divorced in 1982 and in 1987 he married the singer and actress Diahann Carroll. They remained married until 1996 and two years later he married the fashion designer Rena Rowan.
In 1997 he was honoured by the Songwriters Hall of Fame when he was awarded the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award. He was also awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
His live performances went on until 2002 when he appeared in Palm Beach. Florida before retiring. 7 years later, in 2009, he published his autobiography Singing Was the Easy Part.
The retirement was broken, however, in 2011 when he gave a sold out concert in a return to Palm Beach. That same year he put his profile on Facebook. He suffered a mild stroke around 2012 but made a good recovery.
He died of complications he suffered from a respiratory complaint in Miami Beach, Florida, in February 2018. He was 89 years old.
During the course of his career he worked with far too many artists to mention but a few of them include Count Basie, Louis Bellson, Dave Brubeck, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Greco, Woody Herman, Jack Jones, Howard Keel, Stan Kenton, Gene Krupa, Peggy Lee, Anita O’Day, Patti Page, Oscar Peterson, Andre Previn, Cal Tjader and Joe Williams.
His work appeared on nearly 1,000 albums and some of those with other artists include Big Band Salute: Mood Indigo by Duke Ellington, The Return of the Regulator by Warren G, Get Happy by Judy Garland, Lena Horn and Friends by Lena Horne, Some of the Best by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Best of the Crooners by Johnny Mathis, A Major Musical Force With the Leading Artists of His Day by Mitch Miller, The Rat Pack and Friends: Crooners of Las Vegas by The Rat Pack, Classic Love Songs: Mellow Round Midnight by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Love is a Simple Thing by Debbie Reynolds, Dreamer’s Holiday by Nelson Riddle, The Best Of… by Jo Stafford, Platinum Series by Mel Torme and countless compilations.
Sources:
- http://www.vicdamone.com/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Damone
- http://www.allmusic.com/artist/vic-damone-mn0000205254
- http://songwritershalloffame.org/ceremony/entry/C3109/5072
- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0198954/bio
- http://us.macmillan.com/singingwastheeasypart/VicDamone
- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0198954/
- http://www.allmusic.com/artist/vic-damone-mn0000205254/credits