Peg LaCentra

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peg LaCentra (actually Margherita Maria Francesca La Centra , * 10. April 1910 in Boston , Massachusetts ; † 1. June 1996 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American singer of the swing era and actress .

Live and act

LaCentra grew up in Boston and briefly attended the New England Conservatory of Music , where she studied piano, then the Katharine Gibbs Finishing School and the Fenway Academy of Dramatic Art , with the aim of becoming an actress. She first worked in Boston as a radio presenter for the local radio station WNAC before moving to New York in 1931. There she worked as a singer and actress for NBC . With Johnny Green and his orchestra she made her first recording in 1934, The Fortune Teller . In 1936 she appeared with the Dick McDonough Orchestra on The Mell-O-Roll Ice Cream Show . That same year she met Artie Shaw , who was working with McDonough at the time. Shaw brought LaCentra into his orchestra as a band vocalist. From the summer of 1936 she sang with Shaw, appeared with him at the Lexington Hotel and the Paramount Theater in New York and took part in his recordings, such as "Darling, Not Without You", "There's Something in the Air" and "You Can Tell She Comes from Dixie ". After the Shaw orchestra broke up, she worked with Benny Goodman the following year , but immediately returned to Artie Shaw when he put together a new big band . In addition to her recordings with Shaw in the 1930s, she also recorded under her own name ("Big Mouth Minnie" / "Who Threw Mush in Grandpa's Whiskers?", Bluebird 10050), and with Victor Young , Jerry Sears ("Alexander's Back in Town "/" Noodlin '", Bluebird 10021). In 1939 she had her own radio program on NBC, The Peg LaCentra Show .

In later years she worked in a number of films and television series, some as a singing voice for actresses, such as Susan Hayward in Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947) and Ida Lupino in The Man I Love (1947) and Escape Me Never (1947). She also had a cameo in the Joan Crawford film Humoreske (1946) as the interpreter of the standard " Embraceable You ". Occasionally she also sang in clubs.

LaCentra was married to actor Paul Stewart from 1939 .

Discographic notes

  • The Complete Recordings (Baldwin Street Music, ed. 2002)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Obituary New York Times September 8, 1996
personal data
SURNAME LaCentra, Peg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES La Centra, Margherita Maria Francesca
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American singer and actress
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston , Massachusetts , United States
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 1996
Place of death Los Angeles , California , United States