How to Melt Steel

There was a faraway look in the marinated eye of a waiter at Manhattan's Copacabana nightclub. He leaned back against a plaster palm tree, listening to the liquid tones of the songstress running over the lyrics of Bali H'ai. A yokel at a side table dropped his fork. The waiter glared, snatched up the fork, jabbed a clean che at the customer, and sank back against his palm tree.

Songstress Mindy Carson has been melting the steel ears off the song-weary help for the last four weeks. Wrote nightclub critics: "Sensational," "ear-caressing," "the most exciting gal singer we've heard in a long time." Next week the Coba moves Mindy to the top of its bill. She is the youngest singer (22) who has ever headlined the big-time Copa.

Candy Calling. There is nothing quite like Mindy in the upper regions of U.S. entertainment. She walks with the free & easy stride of the first-sacker on a girls' high-school baseball team (which she once was), approaches the microphone like a polite salesgirl (which she also was) addressing a customer. About half the time, Mindy is not at her best. She still has to jog the echoes of half a dozen better-known singers out of her ears; but in top form, her voice is clear as spring water.

Mindy's start was not promising: the leader of The Bronx's James Monroe High School band said she was "not good enough" to sing with his outfit. Mindy believed him, meekly took a job as salesgirl in a Manhattan candy shop. After the Christmas rush, she went to Miami to visit her aunt. A nightclub owner heard her singing with the rest of her party, offered her a job. A scared 17, she answered: "I have to go back to work." But work at the candy shop was never the same again. Mindy quit, and her parents gave her a year to get somewhere in show business.

Six months later, wearing a gingham dress, flat shoes and no makeup, Mindy landed a singing spot at New Rochelle's Glen Island Casino. In December 1946, Paul Whiteman signed her, took her on a nationwide tour with his National Guard radio show.

Copa Calling. In August 1947, Mindy left Whiteman to try a solo act in nightclubs. Her manager recalls: "What charm! She delivered a song as if it were a baseball." Mindy's delivery improved rapidly; in quick succession she sang at New Orleans' Hotel Roosevelt, Cleveland's Mounds Club, Miami's Clover Club.

Then the Copa called, and two month ago RCA Victor admitted Mindy to it select list of popular singers. Her firs sides, One More Time and Twelve O'Clock and All Is Well, got good reviews. Tw Hollywood studios have started preliminary screen tests.

? Says Mindy: "Oh, I know I'm lucky I'd gather be singing than anything els in life. But sometimes you wonder when you're going to get something out of i for yourself. Dresses and traveling am song arrangements cost so much. I had more spending money when I worked for the candy store."

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