The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • 136

1 At) Within two seconds after starting, racing skaters speed along the icy course at upwards of 1600 feet per minute I 4 mm J' UNDERSTUDY. Seven-year-old Ronnie sounds off while Pop listens He Got Rich Quick Tvtt shows how fait tayn Aipirln ocli in your stomach 1 BY JACK SHER I'M! fft Perry Como was one barber whose singing really paid off '-'Mfm i Hi ,15 I I'- 1 k. I i A admittedly lazy young guy, 'aYb -y with dark hair and sleepy brown eyes in a Rudolf Valentino face, has found a painless way to 'make money. His name is Perry Como and this year he will receive close to $1,000,000, without acquiring a single ulcer. Perry Como sings for a living.

(The income-tax people call it a living.) An ex-barber from Canonsburg, Como moved into the swoon 'singer scene with a minimum of fanfare. Within two years he'd topped Crosby and Sinatra in record sales, eight of his discs selling over copies apiece. Two of them, of Love" and "Till the End of Time," simultaneously went the 1,500,000 mark. Then 20th Century-Fox hit him on the head I with a bag of gold and starred him I in two movies. I Third Avenue, Canonsburg, where IPierino Como was born, has been I renamed Perry Como Avenue.

Perry jjwas born on May 18, 1913, the 1 seventh and last son in a family of 13 children. At 11. he went to work And as this glass-of-water test proves, within two seconds after you take Bayer Aspirin, it's ready to go to work, to bring one-night stands in cheap hotels, one-arm restaurants, sleeping by day and working or driving by night. "It was Ronnie who got me out of the band business," Como said. "It was no life for a baby.

sometimes we had to heat his pablum on the radiator of our car." Deciding that the happiness of his wife and the health of his child were more important than his career, Como took them home, picked up the scissors and went back to barber-ing. Offers came rolling in from uch name bands aa J. and T. Dorsey and Guy Lombardo. Perry aid no.

Then Tommy Rockwell, an agency man, offered Como a CBS sustaining show. All Perry wanted to know was whether it would allow him to stay in one place. Rockwell said it would, so Como put away the scissors again and came to New York. That was four years ago. He has climbed steadily ever since.

When Victor signed him, his first contract called for 16 records at $75 each. This year, the disc makers will pay him over $300,000 for the same amount of work. Ha's Against Crooners He won't have a' Perry Como record in his house. Recently he and a friend were driving in from Long Island. Como, who is a golf fiend, was trying to get the results of the National Amateur on his radio.

He kept getting disc jockeys, who were spinning the wax works of Como, Crosby and Sinatra. In disgust Perry finally snapped off the radio, said: "There ought to be a law against those guys." But Como's 11 dozen nieces, all bobby-sox types, do collect his records. He goes home to Canonsburg frequently to see all of his relatives, particularly his mother. Although he constantly supplies her with luxuries, Perry has never told her how much money he actually makes. He knows -she couldn't believe it.

The last time he went home, Mrs. Como asked her son how his singing business was going. "Fine," Perry said. "I'm doing terrific, Mama." "You're going to be a rich boy some day," she said. Actually, Perry is not bad.

He merely walks around, talks and acts natural and does not make you run for an exit. In Hollywood, Como attended just one It made him unhappy. "It was a beautiful house," he says. "But there were too many butlers. A guy wants to wash his hands and a butler leads him to the bathroom.

"I don't say that the parties my wife and I toss are any better. But we have fun. A few of the guys slip down to the basement and roll the dice around, or maybe we play a little poker. We sing our heads off, and next morning we call each other up and talk about what a good time we had." Just a Family Man In his new $35,000 home in Flower Hill, L. Como is strictly a feet-in-the-fireplace fellow.

Callers from the city can't budge him. Once inside his four walls, the only orders he takes are from his small, blonde wife, Roselle. He has one son, Ronnie, aged seven, and when the Como family went to Hollywood for Perry's las't picture, Bing Crosby got the boy into the school which his sons attend. The Crosby boys backed Ronnie against a wall one day and asked him who was the greatest singer in the world. "What did you tell them?" Como asked bis son that evening.

were four to one." When Perry first began to crowd into the juke boxes, his critics accused him of imitating the Crosby style. Actually, Como's voice is more like that of the late Russ Columbo, whom Perry knew in Cleveland. And his biggest hit, "Prisoner of Love," was the song that also brought Columbo to fame. Como, who is the same height as Bing but lighter, got his first singing job while on a hitchhiking vacation. In Lorain, Ohio, he auditioned for Freddie Carlone's small band and when he returned to the barber shop, there was a wire offering him a job at $28 a week.

Perry then married Roselle Belline, and they joined Carlone. This was the beginning of a life of Thanks to three steps 1 in a barber shop, as shoe-shiner and taken in manufacture instead of only one floor-sweeper, was eventually promoted to barber and at 15 started a shop of his own. The Informal Note To the nervous, frenetic world of the hucksters, Como has brought the ease, informality and friendliness of the small-town barber shop. He works in shirt sleeves, without a ti rinrinff rphparsala he drinks tors regularly prescribe it for pain relief is so gentle to the system they have mothers give it even to small childrenl Keep these points in mind whenever you buy anything to ease pain. And don't forget no other pain reliever ecu match Bayer Aspirin's record of reliability its record of use by millions of normal people without ill effect.

So when' you buy, don't ask for "aspirin" alone ask for genuine Bayer Aspirin. Bayer Aspirin is fast. And the fact that Bayer Aspirin is ready to go to work within fwo seconds, to bring you quick relief from ordinary headache, neuritic or neuralgic pain, is important. But its remarkable effectiveness and wonderful gentleness are also important. And records show that Bayer Aspirin's single active ingredient is so effective doc coffee from a cracked milk bottle.

chain smoKes, loats, laugns ana sings. Just before bis show goes on the air, he makes a concession to convention, puts on a coat and tie and is ready for his audience. Twentieth Century-Fox has signed him to a seven-year contract, but Perry is not sure they know what they are doing. After seeing one of his movies, he told a reporter, "If this picture doesn't ruin Hollywood, then genuine mm a nothing ever will." 29.