Rudy Vallée

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Rudy Vallée on saxophone, late 1920s or early 1930s

Hubert Prior "Rudy" Vallée (born July 28, 1901 in Island Pond , Vermont , † July 3, 1986 in North Hollywood, Los Angeles ) was an American singer , saxophonist , band leader , actor and entertainer .

Life

Vallée was born in Vermont, but his father came from French-speaking Canadians from the Québec area . He got his first name Rudy at college from his fellow students after the saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft , whose records he studied intensively. Vallée grew up in Westbrook (Maine) and played drums as a teenager and later played the clarinet and saxophone in various bands in New England . In 1924/25 he played in the Savoy Havana Band in London. He then went to Yale University for a degree in philosophy and formed his own band, Rudy Vallée and the Connecticut Yankees . There he also began to sing (first with an engagement at the Heigh Ho Club in New York City), although he had a rather thin tenor voice. To compensate, he used the then emerging electric microphones or a megaphone , which became his trademark.

He is considered one of the first crooners (followed later by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra ), with particular success with the female audience. He got his first record deal (1928 with Columbia Records, from 1929 with Victor and in the 1930s with different record companies) and appeared on the radio - WABC broadcast his show from the Heigh Ho Club . He was the first to record the song As Time Goes By (1931), although the most famous version today comes from the 1942 film Casablanca . After the success of Casablanca , Victor re-released his old 1931 recording which became a hit.

From 1928 he had his own show (officially The Fleischmann Hour , unofficially The Rudy Vallée Hour ), in which he invited both strangers and show greats and was one of the first to present black musicians - in 1937 he insisted that Louis Armstrong in his radio show jumped in as a presenter, which was a novelty at the time. His theme song was Heigh Ho Everybody (after the club where his success began). In 1929 his autobiography was published under the title Vagabond Dreams Come True . Also in 1929, the singer began appearing in films, first in the lead role in the music film The Vagabond Lo with ver (1929) by Marshall Neilan . Later he mainly appeared in comical supporting roles, often as a somewhat unhappy, sometimes bourgeois admirer of the female lead actress. Particularly noteworthy is his collaboration with director Preston Sturges on a series of comedy classics in the 1940s. In the screwball comedy The Palm Beach Story by Sturges, for example, he played the wealthy admirer of Claudette Colbert in 1942 , and in 1955 he appeared in Richard Sales Gentlemen's Marry Brunettes (1955) with Jane Russell .

He wrote many of his songs himself - some of them were also interpreted by Duke Ellington ( Deep Night , music by Charles Henderson, first recorded by Vallée in 1928), Art Tatum and Glenn Miller ( Oh Ma Ma! ). His hits included The Stein Song (also known as the University of Maine Fighting Song ) 1929, Vieni Vieni (sung in Italian), Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries , The Drunkard Song ( There is a Tavern in the Town ). The latter was a hit for him in 1934. In one of the recording sessions, he couldn't stop laughing - Victor released both recordings.

Vallée continued his career into the 1940s and 1950s, leading a Coast Guard band during World War II. In 1961 he made a comeback with the Broadway show How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying . In the 1980s he toured with his own tailored show.

He was briefly married to actress Jane Greer (divorced in 1944) and married Eleanor Norris in 1946 (she wrote memoirs My Vagabond Lover ). The marriage lasted until Vallée's death. He is buried in Westbrook, Maine .

Filmography (selection)

  • 1929: The Vagabond Lover
  • 1938: Gold Diggers in Paris
  • 1939: Second Fiddle
  • 1942: Breathless to Florida (The Palm Beach Story)
  • 1945: It's in the bag!
  • 1946: Margie
  • 1947: Love is not that simple (The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer)
  • 1947: Crazy Wednesday (The Sin of Harold Diddlebock)
  • 1948: Mother's Secret (I Remember Mama)
  • 1948: My Dear Secretary
  • 1948: The Unfaithfully Yours
  • 1955: How to love in Paris (Gentlemen Marry Brunettes)
  • 1967: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
  • 1968: The Night They Raided Minsky's
  • 1968: Live a Little, Love a Little
  • 1976: Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood)

Web links

Commons : Rudy Vallee  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ First recordings appeared in 1921, Nola and A Dream
  2. Because of the recording ban , it was not possible to re-record at that time