Rudy Vallée
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| Rudy Vallee | ||
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| Background information | ||
| Birth name(s): | Hubert Prior Vallée | |
| Date of birth: | July 28, 1901 | |
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| Birth location: | Island Pond, Vermont | |
| Date of death: | July 3, 1986 (Aged 84) | |
| Death location: | North Hollywood, California | |
| Genre(s): | singer, actor, bandleader, and entertainer | |
| Spouse(s): | Leonie Cuachois (anul) Fay Webb (div) Jane Greer 1944 (div) Eleanor Norris 1946-86 |
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Rudy Vallée (July 28, 1901 - July 3, 1986) was a popular American singer, actor, bandleader, and entertainer. Born Hubert Prior Vallée in Island Pond, Vermont, the son of Charles Alphonse and Catherine Lynch Vallée. Both of his parents were born and raised in Vermont, but their parents were immigrants; the Vallées being of French Canadian origin, while the Lynches were from Ireland. Rudy grew up in Westbrook, Maine. In high school, he took up the saxophone and acquired the nickname "Rudy" after then famous saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft[citation needed].
Having played drums in his high school band, Vallee played clarinet and saxophone in various bands around New England in his youth. In 1917, he decided to enlist for World War I, but was discharged when the Navy authorities found out that he was only 15. He enlisted in Portland, Maine on March 29, 1917, under the false birthdate of July 28, 1899. He was discharged at the Naval Training Station, Newport, Rhode Island, on May 17, 1917 with 41 days of active service. [1] From 1924 through 1925, he played with the "Savoy Havana Band" in London. He then returned to the States to obtain a degree in Philosophy from Yale and to form his own band, "Rudy Vallee and the Connecticut Yankees." With this band, which featured two violins, two saxophones, a piano, a banjo and drums, he started taking vocals (supposedly reluctantly at first). He had a rather thin, wavering tenor voice and seemed more at home singing sweet ballads than attempting vocals on jazz numbers. However, his singing, together with his suave manner and handsome boyish looks, attracted great attention, especially from young women[citation needed]. Vallee was given a recording contract and in 1928, he started performing on the radio.
Vallee became the most prominent and, arguably, the first of a new style of popular singer, the crooner.[citation needed] Previously, popular singers needed strong projecting voices to fill theaters in the days before the electric microphone. Crooners had soft voices that were well suited to the intimacy of the new medium of radio. Vallee's trombone-like vocal phrasing on "Deep Night" would inspire later crooners such as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Perry Como to model their voice on jazz instruments[citation needed].
Vallee also became what was perhaps the first complete example of the 20th century mass media pop star.[citation needed] Flappers (the predecessors of "bobby soxers"), mobbed him wherever he went.[citation needed] His live appearances were usually sold out, and even if his singing could hardly be heard in those venues not yet equipped with the new electronic microphones, his screaming female fans went home happy if they had caught sight of his lips through the opening of the trademark megaphone he sang through.
In 1929, Vallee made his first feature film, The Vagabond Lover (RKO Radio). His first films were made to cash in on his singing popularity. Despite Vallee's rather wooden initial performances, his acting greatly improved in the late 1930s and 1940s. Also in 1929, Vallee began hosting The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour.
Vallee's recording career began in 1928 recording for Columbia Records' cheap labels (Harmony, Velvet Tone, and Diva). He signed to Victor in February 1929 and remained through late 1931, leaving after a heated dispute with company executives over title selections. He then recorded for the short-lived, but extremely popular "Hit of the Week" label (which sold records laminated onto cardboard). In August 1932, he signed with Columbia and stayed with them through 1933; he returned to Victor in June 1933. His records were issued on Victor's new budget label, Bluebird, until November 1933 when he was moved up the full-priced Victor label. He stayed with Victor until signing with ARC in 1936, who released his records on their Perfect, Melotone, Conqueror and Romeo labels until 1937 when he returned to Victor.
Vallee continued hosting popular radio variety shows through the 1930s and 1940s. The Royal Gelatin Hour featured various film performers of the era, such as Fay Wray and Richard Cromwell in dramatic skits.
Along with his group, The Connecticut Yankees, Vallee's best known popular recordings included: "The Stein Song" (aka University of Maine fighting song) in the early part of the decade and "Vieni, Vieni" in the latter '30s. Remarkably for an American, Vallee sang fluently in three Mediterranean languages, and always varied the keys[citation needed], thus paving the way for later pop crooners such as Dean Martin, Andy Williams and Vic Damone. Another memorable rendition of his is "Life Is Just A Bowl of Cherries", in which he imitates Willie Howard's voice in the final chorus. One of his record hits was "The Drunkard Song," popularly known as "There Is a Tavern in the Town." Vallee couldn't stop laughing during the first take, and managed a second take reasonably well. The "laughing" version was so infectious, however, that Victor released both takes.[citation needed]
Vallee's last significant[citation needed] hit song was the 1943 reissue of the melancholy ballad "As Time Goes By", popularized in the feature film Casablanca in 1943 (Due to the mid-1940s recording ban, Victor reissued the version he had recorded 15 years earlier.)[citation needed] During World War II, Vallee performed with the Coast Guard Band,[citation needed] entertaining U.S. troops with this 40-piece orchestra until 1944.
When Vallee took his contractual vacations from his national radio show in 1937, he insisted his sponsor hire Louis Armstrong as his substitute [2] (this was the first instance of an African-American fronting a national radio program). Vallee also wrote the introduction for Armstrong's 1936 book "Swing That Music".
In 1937 Vallee attended Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Massachusetts.[3]
Vallee acted in a number of Hollywood films in the 1930s and 1940s. Displaying his comedic abilities, one of his best acting roles[citation needed] is as the millionaire playboy on whom Claudette Colbert relies on in the 1942 screwball comedy directed by Preston Sturges, The Palm Beach Story. His other notable[citation needed] performances were in I Remember Mama, Unfaithfully Yours and The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.
In 1955, Vallee was featured in Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, co-starring Jane Russell, Alan Young, and Jeanne Crain. The production was filmed on location in Paris. The film was based on the Anita Loos novel that was a sequel to her acclaimed Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Gentlemen Marry Brunettes was popular throughout Europe at the time and was released in France as A Paris Pour les Quatre ("Paris for the Four"), and in Belgium as Tevieren Te Parijs.
In middle age, Vallee's voice matured into a robust baritone. (In his later years he told a collector of his early records that "Everything I did before 1950 you can shit on.")[citation needed] He performed on Broadway in the show How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and appeared in the film of the same name. He appeared in the campy 1960s Batman television show as the character "Lord Marmaduke Fogg".[citation needed] He toured with a one-man theater show into the 1980s. He occasionally opened for The Village People[citation needed].
Vallee was married briefly to the younger actress Jane Greer, but that ended in divorce in 1944. His previous marriage to Leonie Cuachois was annulled and the one to Fay Webb ended in divorce. After divorcing Jane Greer, he married Eleanor Norris in 1946, who wrote a memoir, My Vagabond Lover. Their marriage lasted until his death in 1986.
Rudy Vallee died on July 3, 1986 at the age of 84, and he was interred in St. Hyacinth's Cemetery, Westbrook, Maine, from which his headstone has been falsely rumored to have been stolen.[citation needed] However, it remains in place, and reads "Rudy Vallee, July 28, 1901-July 3, 1986, Loving Husband of Eleanor, Music, Radio, Films," and includes the U.S. Coast Guard Emblem.
Contents |
[edit] Filmography
+ featured musical performer, ++ actor
- +Rudy Vallee and His Connecticut Yankees (1929) (short subject)
- +Radio Rhythm (1929) (short subject)
- +Campus Sweethearts (1929) (short subject)
- ++The Vagabond Lover (1929)
- +Glorifying the American Girl (1929)
- +The Big Dog (1930) (short subject)
- +Betty Co-Ed (1931) (short subject)
- +Kitty from Kansas City (1931) (short subject)
- +Musical Justice (1931) (short subject)
- +Knowmore College (1932) (short subject)
- +Rudy Vallee Melodies (1932) (short subject)
- +The Musical Doctor (1932) (short subject)
- +International House (1933)
- +George White's Scandals (1934)
- +Poor Cinderella (1934) (as an animated version, drawn in caricature)
- +A Trip Thru a Hollywood Studio (1935) (short subject)
- +Sweet Music (1935)
- +Paramount Headliner: Broadway Highlights No. 1 (1935) (short subject)
- +Paramount Headliner: Broadway Highlights No. 2 (1935) (short subject)
- +For Auld Lang Syne (1938) (short subject)
- ++Gold Diggers in Paris (1938)
- ++Second Fiddle (1939)
- +Take Me Back to My Boots and Saddle (1941) (short subject)
- ++Too Many Blondes (1941)
- ++Time Out for Rhythm (1941)
- +Picture People No. 2: Hollywood Sports (1941) (short subject)
- Hedda Hopper's Hollywood No. 6 (1942) (short subject)
- ++The Palm Beach Story (1942)
- ++Happy Go Lucky (1943)
- +Screen Snapshots: Hollywood in Uniform (1943) (short subject)
- +Rudy Vallee and His Coast Guard Band (1944) (short subject)
- +It's In the Bag! (1945) (Cameo)
- ++Man Alive (1945)
- ++People Are Funny (1946)
- ++The Fabulous Suzanne (1946)
- ++The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947)
- ++The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)
- ++So This Is New York (1948)
- ++I Remember Mama (1948)
- ++Unfaithfully Yours (1948)
- ++My Dear Secretary (1949)
- ++Mother Is a Freshman (1949)
- ++The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949)
- ++Father Was a Fullback (1949)
- ++The Admiral Was a Lady (1950)
- ++Ricochet Romance (1954)
- ++Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955)
- ++The Helen Morgan Story (1957)
- ++How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967)
- ++Silent Treatment (1968)
- ++Live a Little, Love a Little (1968)
- ++The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) (narrator)
- ++The Phynx (1970) (Cameo)
- ++Slashed Dreams (1975)
- ++Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
[edit] Listen to
[edit] References
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This article does not cite any references or sources. (January 2008) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. |
- ^ Maine Military Men, 1917-1918 [database online available through [1]. This database was abstracted from "Roster of Maine in the Military Service of the U.S. and Allies in the World War, 1917-1919." Vol I-II. Augusta, ME, U.S.A., n.p., 1929].
[edit] External links
- Rudy Vallée at the Internet Movie Database
- Rudy Vallee Official Website
- Rudy Vallee Collection at the American Radio Archive located at the Thousand Oaks Library
