The Year of Tony Bennett

One night after I’d made an appearance on the Tonight Show shortly after Tony Bennett On Holiday, I got a call from the great silent movie star Gloria Swanson. She had called out of the blue to tell me how much she enjoyed seeing me on the Carson show. She said, “Whatever you’re doing, just keep doing it like that, because you’ve never looked better.” And then she added, “By the way I was a very good friend of Billie Holiday, and once when we were talking she said, ‘Look out for this boy Tony Bennett, he’s really going somewhere.’ I’d never imagined that Gloria Swanson and Billie Holiday actually talked about me. What a lift that phone call gave me.

Tony Bennett