VIC DAMONE

(12 June 1928 - 11 February 2018)

The popular American singer Vic Damone, who has died aged 89, was born Vito Rocco Farinola. He won a talent contest in 1945 and immediately began singing in clubs and subsequently became a recording artist. His first film as an actor was Rich, Young and Pretty in 1951, an MGM musical with Jane Powell with whom he also made Athena and Hit the Deck. He was in Stanley Donen’s Deep In My Heart, a biopic on composer Sigmund Romberg and he played the Caliph in Vincente Minnelli’s Kismet with Ann Blyth and Dolores Gray. He appeared (uncredited) as himself in Viva Las Vegas! with Dan Dailey and Cyd Charisse. In 1960 he was in Phil Karlson’s war film Hell to Eternity but the cinema was not his main career, as he was essentially a crooner singing live and on record. He did guest shots on TV shows with Red Skelton, June Allyson, Dick Van Dyke, Danny Thomas etc and appeared in many TV documentaries, but his last acting role was in The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries in 1978. Vic Damone had five wives, including actresses Pier Angeli and Diahann Carroll, and fathered four children.

MICHAEL DARVELL