20 Heartthrobs from the Golden Age of Hollywood

Frank Sinatra was the original heartthrob

The ladies called him “Ol’ Blue Eyes,” and the world called the ladies “bobby soxers.” In the mid-’30s, singer and actor Frank Sinatra became, arguably, the original heartthrob. Ladies around the nation flocked to his shows, as The Guardian’s New York correspondent observed about Sinatra in 1945:

“The United States is now in the midst of one of those remarkable phenomena of mass hysteria … the teenage girls who constitute the main part of his audience also wear short white half-hose, and are therefore called ‘bobby-sox girls’ or, more simply, ‘bobby-soxers’.”

And according to Mental Floss, Sinatra’s publicist, George Evans, even auditioned bobby soxers to scream at Sinatra’s concerts, paying them a few bucks each to ignite excitement for the star.