Chart entered : 9 July 1954
Chart peak : 12
Number of hits : 37
Given Frank's status it's mildly surprising that it took him eighteen months to appear in the charts and he too falls into the pattern of having a single week in the anchor position.
I'm not going to waste any time attempting a potted bio of Frank's pre-chart career. Frank had three number one albums that have already been covered on Then Play Long in exhaustive detail so Marcello can tell you all you need to know. The other reason is that his music just leaves me cold; I don't like his voice, his style, his material , any of it so I'm going to be brief here.
"Young At Heart", hyphenated in some sources, was a monster hit in the USA at the back end of 1953 reaching number 2. At the time Frank was filming a musical with Doris Day and Gig Young and the song , originally just a standalone single, was appropriated for its soundtrack and also used for the film's title. ( N.B. I don't mind Frank as an actor at all ).
Frank also changed the ending because he didn't want his character to be killed off.
Marcello doesn't actually have much to say about this song beyond noting that Frank "sounds somewhat ill at ease with the bland optimism". I beg to differ. Firstly the song isn't blandly optimistic , it's all conditional. You can be happy if you've escaped any previous emotional damage. It leaves room for Frank to sing it as a 38 year old outsider just coming out of a very rocky patch in his career. It makes an otherwise routine smoocher an interesting record.
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