He happens every spring

[Times photos: Michael Rondou] On the way home, Johnny Franks plays along with his boom box in the back of a limo. The boom box accompanied Franks on the Violin-O-Gram he played for Brenda and Frank Bernard, who retired recently.

By JOHN BARRY, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 27, 2003

Johnny Franks, 76, is back in town with his latest song and dance. In a stretch limo he rents by the hour.

ST. PETERSBURG -- Downstairs in the St. Petersburg Times lobby, Johnny Franks scoured a newsroom directory for a new name, someone he hadn't called before, who wouldn't recognize his London accent, who hadn't seen the thick stack of clippings he lugs under one arm:

"Johnny Franks: Front Man for the Top Stars."

"The Many Faces of Johnny Franks."

"Comedian with an Effervescent Personality."

"Front Man to the Stars Returns to the Palladium."

One of Johnny Franks’ trademarks is his gold violin pendant. Persistence is another.

For the past eight years, his lobby visits have been a late-winter seasonal observance, as inevitable as Gasparilla. If it's after January, it must be Johnny. But he's 76 now. Bad hip. Stiff shoulder. Getting older by the minute. So's his story.

Dare I take the elevator down? It's all been said before: Celebrity Violinist. Front Man to the Top Vegas Stars and Royalty. Fiddler for Felix Mendelssohn and his Royal Hawaiian Serenaders.

But Johnny was planted in the lobby. Someone had to go down to see him. I took the elevator, plagued by doubts. What news could Johnny Franks bring me? What more could Johnny Franks possibly have to say?

The doors opened. I saw Johnny's gleaming gold violin pendant. I saw his bright toothy smile (he carries Poli-Grip in his violin case). My doubts vanished, like gray fog obliterated in the brilliance of a rising sun.

I knew he'd think of something.

A few days later, I was sitting beside Johnny Franks and his wife, Nanette, in a white stretch limo driven by a pretty Asian woman. A small blue boom box lay on the seat. A bottle of champagne was chilling in a bucket of ice. We weren't supposed to touch that yet.

Johnny was wearing a white tuxedo and his trademark gold violin pendant. He was driving the chauffeur crazy by giving her confusing directions that led to dead ends in condo parking lots and elaborate U-turns.

We were about to deliver a Violin-O-Gram. This was Johnny's 2003 inspiration. Most folks today just send Stripper-Grams. But what does a Stripper-Gram say? "It says how common," Johnny said, frowning. He delivers birthday greetings, love notes or thank yous in a tux, not a G-string.

Yet, it seemed less ambitious than his inspiration the two previous years, when he hired the hall at the Palladium and put on his one-man show.

He got a good story out of it last year. The Pinellas News noted that he "has wowed audiences with his violin music, comedic impressions and songs for the last 56 years." About 500 people showed up.

This year, "I had a hip operation, and it stymied me a bit," he said.

So since he got here from England in January, he has mostly played nursing homes for $50 a gig. And he came up with the Violin-O-Gram.

Johnny's rates are flexible: For $250, he arrives in a limo carrying a big bouquet of flowers. For $150, he arrives in his car, no flowers.

"If they say $75, I come in a Buccaneers hat. If they say $50, I come in a horse and cart."

The whole point, though, is to show some class. "This is ideal for people who have money," he said.

Johnny never was a classical musician, never had philharmonic aspirations. He learned to play the violin as a kid in the school band for six pence a lesson. He never could read music very well.

"I saw it only as a bit of fun," Johnny said. "I unscrewed the end and undid the bow. I found a paper clip and a worm, and I put that on and went to the local pond and used the bow as a fishing rod. That's true.

"But I had a good ear," he said. "I could play any tune you like. I could play on two pieces of wood with a string and make a tune. That's how come I got to be a band leader at an early age."

He was in his teens when he toured Britain and Europe during World War II, performing for troops and civilians.

At the end of the war, in Austria, he nearly died with his boots on.

"We were performing in an airplane hangar," he said. "There were four fellows and six girls. The girls were dancing, and I played the violin and sang. All of a sudden I saw trees going up and down. I stopped playing. You see it before you hear it."

Captured German land mines, stashed in a field, had exploded. "There were hundreds of them, big ones that take out tanks, and they were all in the field," he said. "The whole lot went up. It blew me 50 feet and wrapped the violin around my neck.

"An MP said he knew where there were violins. They took me in a jeep to an opera house. Musicians were practicing there. An MP said to a German, 'Confiscation!' and took his violin and bow. He told me, 'Now you got your violin.' "

Maybe Johnny could've been a contender. He played clubs all over England during the '40s and '50s. He was indeed a Front Man for the Top Stars. Photo after photo shows him with famous entertainers at the Las Vegas Room in London. He's usually wearing a big lavender bow tie. (Liberace was an influence.) There he is with Dionne Warwick in one photo. Jerry Lewis, Abbe Lane. Frank Gorshin. Trini Lopez.

Maybe he could have been a headliner himself if he had tried harder.

But when he married Nanette, he had to make certain choices. Nanette, though she was 19 when they met, knew what performers are like. "Let's face it," she said. "That type of person is terribly selfish."

She had to make him understand that he could not put her second, "that I've also got a life." She had to teach him something few entertainers ever learn: humility.

Now more than ever, he realizes what the lesson meant.

"If I hadn't listened, I'd be divorced or dead," he said. "Musicians like me all go that way. Things go down for them, and they're ashamed to do the things I do -- to accept 50 bucks to play an hour for the old people. They wouldn't do that."

So music was never his whole life. He stayed off the road and played local jazz clubs and weddings. His only gold records turned out to be old jukebox records. "Ex-jukebox 45s with holes in the middle," he said. "I was the first man in England to try to resell them. I put them into 90 supermarkets. I started with about 30 bucks. After 18 months, I sold out for 20,000 pounds."

The buyer was the corporate parent of Mad Magazine. It wanted to sell cheap records in British supermarkets, too, and wanted Johnny out of the way.

With the buyout, he and Nanette bought a four-bedroom home with a pool on a quarter-acre outside London. They still live there in the summer.

The Mad Magazine record spinoff went bankrupt after two years.

Johnny also sold jingles.

"I wrote one for a roofer named A.C. Denton," he said. "He had six little red vans."

There's a man who comes to our house

With bricks, cement and sand.

His name is A.C. Denton,

the sign on his red van.

He's a master builder, roofer

Our extension's very well done.

So call for A.C. Denton!

333-4701!

"Show business has not been the be-all and end-all of his life," Nanette said. "We've been enough on the outside that nothing can hurt us but enough on the inside to have the enjoyment. In that way, nothing hurts you. We've lived well; we do live well. If he had been more famous, we probably wouldn't still be together. That's how it goes."

They've been married 52 years.

We were closing in on our Violin-O-Gram assignation. Johnny gave the chauffeur last-minute instructions. She would knock on the door. He would wait in the limo. "When they answer the door, say, 'Come forward!' " he told the driver.

While she got out and knocked, he queued up his boom box. A tinny instrumental version of New York, New York began. A couple stepped out of the condo, trying to see inside the limo. Johnny tried to leap out, but he's not as limber as he once was. He struggled out, the violin at his chin.

I waited in the limo with Nanette. Do they think we're crazy? What are we doing here?

"It's coming into other peoples' lives," Nanette said. "That's what's so very interesting. Doesn't matter how long."

The couple Johnny serenaded looked startled but only for a moment.

After all, Frank and Brenda Bernard said, they're New Yorkers. The Violin-O-Gram was a gift from Scott Travers, a real estate agent who'd just sold them a Tierra Verde condo.

The Bernards are retiring here. Frank was a New York City fire captain who hung it up after 29 years.

"I knew 40 of those firefighters who died on 9/11," he said quietly.

He gave Johnny's white tux a long look.

"But, hey," Frank said, smiling, "we're in Florida."

Johnny popped the champagne.

Johnny's going home soon. He rents a condo on Isla Del Sol through May. But he's already got some ideas for 2004. Maybe no violin next time. Something about a toy dragon that flies. He showed me intricate blueprints. I couldn't really understand them.

I'll just have to wait, I guess. And keep watching the lobby.

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