Fifty-six years ago this week, headlines screamed out an unlikely scandal – twenty-one-year-old accordion-playing Italian heartthrob Dick Contino walked away from his Army induction at Ford Ord, California, and disappeared.  Where was he?  Where had America’s newest musical star, the idol of million of teenage girls, gone?  His fans wanted to know, and so did Uncle Sam.

Well, as it turned out, Contino had panicked, certainly a reasonable reaction to getting your draft notice while America was deep into the Korean conflict.  And Dick wasn’t just your average draftee; he was a big star…in an unlikely medium, perhaps, but nobody had ever played the accordion quite like Dick Contino did.  He had shot to fame as a teenage accordion prodigy under the guiding hand of famous bandleader Horace Heidt, and before he was twenty he used to make more money in one night than many men did in a year. 

For more than a week Contino was AWOL; he had completely dropped out of sight, and just as a manhunt was getting underway, he turned himself in, accompanied by his mother.  It turns out that he had bolted from Fort Ord and made his way to his parents’ house, then thought things over and surrendered.  There was to be no leniency for the talented and charismatic squeeze box virtuoso, though.  Dick Contino was convicted of draft evasion, fined ten thousand dollars, sentenced to and served six months in prison, then got the chance to do the whole Army thing over again.  He was inducted into the service and eventually was stationed overseas in Korea, where he served his time with honor and later received a pardon from President Truman for the earlier incident. 

By the time Contino finally got out of the Army, his red-hot career had cooled somewhat and he was forced to reinvent himself, all the while dogged by the draft day disappearance debacle which prejudiced some of his potential audience against him.  He still was a master of the accordion, and also turned to singing and acting in an attempt to broaden his appeal.  Perhaps best known in that realm for the hep B-movie crime drama Daddy-O (1958) – thanks to Mystery Science Theater – and for his literary immortalization in writer James Ellroy’s novella Dick Contino’s Blues, Contino is still extremely active today on the concert circuit, frequently appearing on Vegas stages and at various accordion celebrations all over the nation.