Sid Mark

For 10 years, Sid Mark played nothing but Sinatra on his weekly radio show. Sinatra's people loved it and kept calling from the Coast. "What can we do for you, Sid?" they asked. "You want a TV, a couple extra records?" Sid wanted only one thing - to meet Frank. "Sure, kid, sure," Sinatra's people would say. But Frank never called. In 1966, Mark got an early release of a new Sinatra album and played it continuously for two days. A local record store sold out its 200 advance copies in one day, restocked overnight and sold out again the next day. Sinatra heard about it and went wild.

Merry Christmas, fans of Frank Sinatra. After you've eaten turkey and exchanged gifts, you can hear Sid Mark again on WPHT-AM (1210). All day, in fact. In what could be construed as a mild surprise, WPHT announced that Mark, the iconic Sinatra expert and friend who played Sinatra music every Friday since 1955 and many Sundays as well on WWDB-FM (96.5), will begin his new all-Sinatra music show at 7 a.m. Christmas Day and go a marathon 12 hours. He will start his regular schedule the following Friday night.

It was almost 33 years ago today that Sid Mark, then a 22-year-old DJ not long out of the Army, was pulling the wee-hours shift on a jazz station that is now all-talk WWDB-FM (96.5). As he was about to wrap things up, he got a call from the station manager. The host of the next show, due in at any time, wasn't going to make it this night. Mark had to fill in. "I wasn't prepared," Mark recalled last week. "So I went on the air and just said, 'What do you want to hear? Basie?

For Sid Mark, there will be life after Sinatra. Mark's lonnnng-running (43 years worth) Sinatra-only radio shows on WWDB-FM (96.5) will continue, and probably even flourish, as new generations discover Ol' Blue Eyes and as concert recordings that had been held back are posthumously released. But for now, Mark is among the mourning, finding it hard to believe that one of his best friends is gone. Yesterday, faced with the contradiction of being stunned by the expected, Mark - always a gentleman on-air - was a little quieter, his voice more somber.

Change in format for Philly station WWDB-FM I am 25 years old and have been listening to Sid Mark on WWDB-FM (96.5) for five years (a mere one-ninth of the show's air time). I was shocked to see that the station has changed formats so drastically and so suddenly (Inquirer, Nov. 7). From talk radio to all '80s is about as drastic as switching from classical to pop (oh, I forgot, that also happened in Philly). I ask any station in Philadelphia to please consider the fans of Mark's Frank Sinatra shows and keep them on the air. And to Sid Mark, thanks for entertaining your fans, both young and old, for so long.

Phillippe Sinatra Ryan Phillippe also has a fascination - formerly an obsession - with Frank Sinatra. "I didn't date much in high school," he said, "and when I was 16 I used to drive around in my dad's pickup on Friday night and listen to Sid Mark. " A particular fan of Ol' Blue Eyes' 1950s period, "when his voice and swagger peaked," Phillippe named his daughter Ava (after Sinatra love Ava Gardner) and his bulldog, who passed away last year, Frank. He became this macho icon, Phillippe said of his idol, and he started as "a little runt of a guy from Hoboken.

ANOTHER YEAR! Can it really be We're about to start 2-0-1-3? We survived a Superstorm named Sandy , Renamed Obama Yankee Doodle Dandy. The Phils and Iggles let us down - So who's on first in our hometown? Happy New Year, Mayor Nutter , And every New Year Mummers strutter; You, too, Andy Reid , while you're still around, Chief Charles Ramsey (keep us safe and sound), Schools boss Bill Hite , please take a bow. Bart Blatstein (it's YOUR Tower now)

Tonight's Spectrum concert by Bon Jovi is sold out, but you can catch the New Jersey rocker tonight at 11 in a 90-minute music and interview special on WMMR (FM/93.3). The interview was conducted with leader John Bon Jovi in New York by free-lance rock writer Timothy White. On "Radio Classics," tonight from 8 to 10 on WCAU (AM/1210), host Gary Hodgson has three biggies from radio's glory days - "Fibber McGee and Molly," "The Green Hornet" and "The Saint. " Fibber was a comical guy who kept his closets overflowing with junk.

Franny Casella was distraught. Anne Ricco, too. A guy called from Argentina. Treasurer Otto Rankel checked in, wondering what they should do. The phone rang off the hook all day Friday for Edward "Stas" Stasny, 69, the founder of the Frank Sinatra Social Society. The 100-member fan club publishes a newsletter and sponsors a barbecue and pool party in July and a dinner dance around Sinatra's Dec. 12 birthday. But the first call on Friday morning was the worst. Stas was awakened at 4 in the morning with the news.

I signed off from the AM radio band Friday. Starting Monday, I will be heard exclusively on SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124. After 23 years on a terrestrial radio platform, this represents a major change. But while many see it as a futuristic move, given that 24 million Americans now have satellite radios, I refer to it as a return to my roots. My inauspicious start two decades ago was as the guest of a guest host. Advertising guru Brian Tierney was himself filling in on WWDB-FM (96.5), "the Talk Station," when he invited me. I was hooked from the first minute the "on air" light went on, a combination of ego and the belief that I could develop a skill set. I still have the letter I then wrote to the station owner, Chuck Schwartz, seeking a gig. (He gave me a meeting after Larry Kane put in a good word.)

I signed off from the AM radio band Friday. Starting Monday, I will be heard exclusively on SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124. After 23 years on a terrestrial radio platform, this represents a major change. But while many see it as a futuristic move, given that 24 million Americans now have satellite radios, I refer to it as a return to my roots. My inauspicious start two decades ago was as the guest of a guest host. Advertising guru Brian Tierney was himself filling in on WWDB-FM (96.5), "the Talk Station," when he invited me. I was hooked from the first minute the "on air" light went on, a combination of ego and the belief that I could develop a skill set. I still have the letter I then wrote to the station owner, Chuck Schwartz, seeking a gig. (He gave me a meeting after Larry Kane put in a good word.)

ANOTHER YEAR! Can it really be We're about to start 2-0-1-3? We survived a Superstorm named Sandy , Renamed Obama Yankee Doodle Dandy. The Phils and Iggles let us down - So who's on first in our hometown? Happy New Year, Mayor Nutter , And every New Year Mummers strutter; You, too, Andy Reid , while you're still around, Chief Charles Ramsey (keep us safe and sound), Schools boss Bill Hite , please take a bow. Bart Blatstein (it's YOUR Tower now)

Phillippe Sinatra Ryan Phillippe also has a fascination - formerly an obsession - with Frank Sinatra. "I didn't date much in high school," he said, "and when I was 16 I used to drive around in my dad's pickup on Friday night and listen to Sid Mark. " A particular fan of Ol' Blue Eyes' 1950s period, "when his voice and swagger peaked," Phillippe named his daughter Ava (after Sinatra love Ava Gardner) and his bulldog, who passed away last year, Frank. He became this macho icon, Phillippe said of his idol, and he started as "a little runt of a guy from Hoboken.

James Kaplan wrote the book on Frank Sinatra - the 700-plus-page biography Frank Sinatra: The Voice. Monday night at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, under the auspices of Michael Smerconish's book club and in front of several hundred Sinatra fans, Kaplan encountered the man who could have written the book - Sid Mark , the Philly radio host who for 55 years has kept Mr. S's flame burning. Kaplan, a veteran journalist who says he regards Sinatra as a genius, recounted anecdotes gleaned from years of research, insisting that he didn't want his story to solely focus on "the women, the mob, and the fistfights.

Friday With Frank : Nov. 11, 1955-Dec. 31, 2010. Sid Mark , who's been ring-a-ding-dinging the sounds of Frank Sinatra for 55 years, has learned that WPHT-AM will eliminate his Friday radio program. Sunday With Sinatra - Mark's five-hour marquee show (8 a.m. to 1 p.m.) - is not going anywhere, he's been told. He expects to inform his audience Sunday morning about the imminent change. WPHT (the Big Talker 1210) is retooling its lineup over New Year's, moving morning talker Michael Smerconish to 3 to 7 p.m. and eliminating the syndicated talk shows of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity (who have not yet found new Philadelphia stations)

Radio personality Frank Ford - a pioneer in talk radio who over the decades worked for just about every station in town - died yesterday from complications of a stroke at Vitas Hospice at St. Agnes Hospital in Philadelphia. A longtime Center City resident, he was 92. Although Mr. Ford built a reputation as a musical-theater impresario, he was best known as one of Philadelphia's first talk-radio celebrities and the husband of Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham. "No wife could have a better cheerleader and supporter," Abraham said yesterday.

Keep your eyes open for Ellen Barkin , who starts work today on Happy Tears , the family drama starring Demi Moore and Parker Posey as sisters. Barkin plays the girlfriend of their father ( Rip Torn ). Shooting has been bouncing around the area, including Prospect Park, Old City, Washington Square West, and Warminster. Cast members have been quite visible over the weekends in the Rittenhouse Square area. Considering that Happy Tears is a modest-budget independent film, Moore and husband Ashton Kutcher have been doing their part to pump up the restaurant economy.

Joey Bishop, 89, who deadpanned his way from South Philadelphia to comic stardom and a place in Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack, died of multiple causes Wednesday night at his home in Newport Beach, Calif. With his blank expression and dry delivery, Mr. Bishop could convey in his signature phrase, "Sonuvagun," a bemused wonderment that tickled audiences. His low-key demeanor and understated wit made him the perfect foil to the Rat Pack's hipster's row - Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr. - who made their mark during the '60s, starting at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas.

James Corea, 63, of Haddonfield, the well-known gym owner and host of local radio talk shows about fitness, died Saturday shortly after his arrival at Kennedy Memorial Hospitals-University Medical Center/Cherry Hill. "Dr. Jim" Corea, who had lived in the borough for the last 30 years, was well-known as a nutritionist and for 10 years was a weight trainer for the Eagles. He also had a sports-medicine practice and in 1962 opened Jim Corea's Gym & Health Club in the Woodcrest Shopping Center in Cherry Hill.

Fairy tales can come true, Ol' Blue Eyes used to sing. Yesterday it happened to one of his old pallies - Sid Mark. The silver-haired, silky-voiced host of the legendary long-running radio show, "Fridays with Frank" and "Sundays with Sinatra" - bounced unceremoniously from the airwaves of WWDB last month in a format overhaul - is making a comeback. Mark, 67, was hired yesterday by local talk-radio station WPHT (1210-AM) to do three shows every weekend beginning Dec. 29. And he says the best is yet to come.