The Columbus Day Riot happened on October 12, 1944 when tens of thousands of teenage girls swarmed the Manhattan venue Frank Sinatra was set to play and caused a ruckus - but created a milestone in popular music.
The utter passion and hysteria surrounding the thin 25-year-old crooner whose popularity demanded that he play multiple shows a night, established Sinatra as the first bonafide pop superstar who would one day be followed by Elvis, The Beatles, and Michael Jackson.
Time magazine noted the phenomenon when they witnessed the unparalleled fandom when Sinatra opened the Paramount on New Years Eve, 1942.
"In various manifestations, this sort of thing has been going on all over America the last few months," the magazine said. "Not since the days of Rudolph Valentino has American womanhood made such unabashed public love to an entertainer. It started with Frank Sinatra's first solo appearance at the Paramount theater last December, flowered when he moved on to Manhattan's Riobamba club. The press noted his impact on every woman present, recorded the phenomenon loudly and long."
Jack Benny introduced young blue eyes at that NYE show and the ovation was so thunderous, it shocked him. “I thought the goddamned building was going to cave in," Benny told Nancy Sinatra in her biography, My Father. "I never heard such a commotion with people running down to the stage, screaming and nearly knocking me off the ramp. All this for a fellow I never heard of.”
Benny wasn't alone in being startled that night. Sinatra had been having a hard time booking dates around the city in late 1942 and was thrilled when he was offered the gig on such a special night. So when he heard the sustained shrieks, he too, was surprised.
“The sound that greeted me was absolutely deafening. It was a tremendous roar," Frank told his daughter in the book. "Five thousand kids, stamping, yelling, screaming, applauding. I was scared stiff. I couldn’t move a muscle. Benny Goodman froze, too. He was so scared he turned around, looked at the audience, and said, 'what the hell was that?'”
That wasn't the half of it.
The theater extended his engagement to multiple shows a night, every day for all of January and most of February of 1943. Some days he'd do six sets, and reportedly one day he did 11 sets starting early in the morning and not ending until the wee hours past midnight.
Why the demand? Besides being easy on the eyes and ears, from 1940 through that extended run in early 1943, he had racked up 23 top 10 singles while being part of the Tommy Dorsey experience.
He had also had roles in the films Step Lively (1944) and Higher and Higher (1943).
So when Francis Albert returned to the Paramount the next October he was met with a gauntlet of youngsters who had brought pillowcases adorned with his face, memorabilia to be signed, and so much energy within their bobby sox.
Approximately 30,000-35,000 ravenous fans mobbed the theater. Police were called from the Columbus Day Parade to the grand theater on the corner of Seventh Ave. and 43rd St.
Of the 3,500 inside the theater who had enjoyed an earlier show, thousands refused to leave to make room for the next crowd. At one point 700 police had reportedly arrived to quell the mayhem.
Inside, the theater had hired 50 extra ushers, "who proved no match for teenage hormones. The ticket booth was pushed in, windows smashed. Here was nothing less than a teen riot," wrote the NY Daily News.
"The Paramount riot of October 1944 made it clear how thoroughly so many observers had miscalculated when they assumed earlier that Sinatra had passing fad tattooed all over his bony forehead. Just because his fans were teenagers, it turned out, didn’t mean that in two weeks they’d be back swallowing goldfish," David Hinckley wrote in the Daily News.
So when fans line up a day or two over night to see a show or to buy some merch, not only is that not a new trend, but it was done in bigger numbers and slightly more violently starting 80 years ago, for Frank Sinatra.
And they did it in suits, dresses, and bobby sox.
