Don Ameche
from the trailer for The Feminine Touch (1941)
Born	Dominic Felix Amici (1908-05-31)May 31, 1908 Kenosha, Wisconsin, U.S.
Died	December 6, 1993(1993-12-06) (aged 85) Scottsdale, Arizona, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1935–1993
Spouse	Honore Prendergast (m. 1932–1986) «start: (1932)–end+1: (1987)»"Marriage: Honore Prendergast to Don Ameche" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Don_Ameche)

Don Ameche (May 31, 1908 – December 6, 1993)^[1] was an Academy Award winning American actor^[2][3] with a career spanning almost sixty years.

After touring in vaudeville, he starred in many film-biographies, including The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939), causing the name Ameche to be used as the slang word for a telephone.

He continued to appear on Broadway, as well as on radio and TV, where he was host and commentator for International Showtime, covering circus and ice-shows all over Europe. Ameche remained married to his wife Honore for fifty-four years, and they had six children.

Personal life[link]

Ameche was born Dominic Felix Amici in Kenosha, Wisconsin. His mother, Barbara Etta (née Hertle), was of Scottish, Irish, and German descent, and his father, Felice Ameche, was an immigrant bartender from Italy, born in Montemonaco, Ascoli Piceno, Marche, Italy whose original surname was "Amici."^[4][5][6] He had three brothers, Umberto (Bert), James (Jim Ameche), and Louis and three sisters, Jane, Elizabeth and Catherine.^[7] Ameche attended Marquette University, Loras College and the University of Wisconsin, where his cousin Alan Ameche played football and won the Heisman Trophy in 1954.^[8] Ameche had gone to university to study law but found theatricals far more interesting and so decided on a stage career.

From 1946 to 1949, Ameche, along with other Los Angeles entertainment figures including Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, was a co-owner of the Los Angeles Dons of the All-America Football Conference, a rival to the National Football League.^[9] Ameche was instrumental in forming and leading the ownership group in the year before play began^[10] and initially served as team president.^[11]

Ameche was married to Honore Prendergast from 1932 until her death in 1986. They had six children. One, Ron Ameche, owned the restaurant "Ameche's Pumpernickel" in Coralville, Iowa. Ameche's younger brother, Jim Ameche, was also an actor in radio and films. His other brother, Bert, was an architect who worked for many years for the U.S. Navy in Port Hueneme, California and for the US Postal Service in Los Angeles, California, before retirement.

Vaudeville and films[link]

Ameche had done well in college dramatics and when a lead actor for a stock company production of Excess Baggage did not turn up, a friend persuaded him to stand in for the missing actor. He enjoyed the experience and got a juvenile lead in Jerry For Short in New York, followed by a tour in vaudeville with Texas Guinan, until Guinan dropped him from the act, dismissing him as "too stiff."^[12] He made his film debut in 1935 and by the late 1930s, had established himself as a leading actor in Hollywood. He appeared in such films as Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), as the title character in The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939). It led to the use of the word, "ameche," as slang for telephone in common catchphrases, as noted by Mike Kilen in the Iowa City Gazette (December 8, 1993): "The film prompted a generation to call people to the telephone with the phrase: 'You're wanted on the Ameche.'"^[13] Another highlight was co-starring with Gene Tierney in Ernest Lubitch's Heaven Can Wait, a film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 1940 he was voted the 21st most popular star in Hollywood.^[14]

Ameche played so many roles based on real people that on one of his radio broadcasts Fred Allen joked that "Pretty soon, Don Ameche will be playing Don Ameche." Soon afterwards, in It's in the Bag! (1945), which starred Allen, Ameche indeed played himself in a bit part.

Radio and television[link]

Ameche was a major radio star, heard on such shows as Empire Builders, The First Nighter Program, Family Theater and the Betty and Bob soap opera. Following his appearances as announcer and sketch participant on The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show, he achieved memorable success during the late 1940s playing opposite Frances Langford in The Bickersons, the Philip Rapp radio comedy series about a combative married couple. It began on NBC in 1946, moving to CBS the following year.

He also enjoyed a substantial Broadway career, with roles in Silk Stockings, Goldilocks, Holiday for Lovers, Henry, Sweet Henry and Our Town.

As host of International Showtime, 1962.

Ameche's best-known television role came between 1961 and 1965, when he traveled throughout Europe with a television videotape unit and camera crew to cover a different European resident circus or ice show that was taped for presentation on a weekly series titled International Showtime on NBC television. Ameche was present at each circus or ice show taped for the series, and was seen as host and commentator. His "anchor position" was in the grandstands at the particular show being taped.

He also guest starred in many television series, including NBC's The Polly Bergen Show and ABC's The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom and Jack Palance's circus drama, The Greatest Show on Earth, which aired in the 1963-1964 season. In the latter 1960s and early 1970s, Ameche directed the NBC television sitcom Julia, starring the African American actress Diahann Carroll.

After the release of two 1970 comedies, The Boatniks and Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came?, Ameche was absent from theatrical films for the next 13 years. His only appearance in cinema during that time was in F For Fake, Orson Welles' documentary on hoaxes, when 20th Century-Fox mistakenly sent Welles newsreel footage of Ameche misidentified as footage of Howard Hughes. Ameche also appeared in an early episode of Columbo entitled "Suitable For Framing" (1971).

Ameche and fellow veteran actor Ralph Bellamy were eventually cast in John Landis' Trading Places in 1983, playing rich brothers intent on ruining an innocent man for the sake of a one-dollar bet. In an interview some years later on Larry King Live, co-star Jamie Lee Curtis said that Ameche, a proper old-school actor, went to everyone on the set ahead of time to apologize when he was called to say the "F-word" in the film. The film's success and their comedic performances brought them both back into the Hollywood limelight. Ameche's next role, in Cocoon (1985), won him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He continued working for the rest of his life, including in the sequel, Cocoon: The Return. He earned good reviews for the David Mamet / Shel Silverstein penned Things Change; the New York Times said that he showed "...the kind of great comic aplomb that wins actors awards for other than sentimental reasons."^[15] In 1990, Ameche appeared in an episode of The Golden Girls as Rose Nylund's father. His last films were Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993) and Corrina, Corrina (1994), completed only days before his death.

For his contribution to radio, Ameche received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6313 Hollywood Boulevard and a second star at 6101 Hollywood Boulevard for his television work.

Death[link]

Ameche died on December 6, 1993, at his son Don Jr's house in Scottsdale, Arizona of prostate cancer,^[16] at the age of 85. He was cremated and his ashes are buried at Resurrection Catholic Cemetery, also known as St. Philomena's Cemetery, in Asbury, Iowa.^[17]

Filmography[link]

Ameche in the 1938 film Alexander's Ragtime Band.

Features[link]

Short subjects[link]

Jack Haley (left), Alice Faye (center), Don Ameche and Tyrone Power (right) in a trailer for Alexander's Ragtime Band.

• Screen Snapshots: Stars at the Tropical Ice Gardens (1939)
• Weekend in Hollywood (1947)
• Screen Snapshots: Hollywood Night at 21 Club (1952)

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Ohmart, Ben (2007). Don Ameche: The Kenosha Comeback Kid. Albany: BearManor Media. ISBN 1-59393-045-3. 

External links[link]

Biography portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Don Ameche

• Don Ameche at the Internet Movie Database
• Don Ameche at the Internet Broadway Database
• Don Ameche at the TCM Movie Database
• Don Ameche at AllRovi
• Don Ameche at Find a Grave
• Walking With Don Ameche - Steven Ameche, Entertainment Attorney

Mary Martin
Photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1949
Born	Mary Virginia Martin (1913-12-01)December 1, 1913 Weatherford, Texas, U.S.
Died	November 3, 1990(1990-11-03) (aged 76) Rancho Mirage, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress, singer
Years active	1938–1985
Spouse	Ben Hagman (1930–1936) Richard Halliday (1940–1973)

Mary Virginia Martin (December 1, 1913 – November 3, 1990) was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989. She was also the mother of actor Larry Hagman.

Early life[link]

Mary Martin's life as a child, as she describes it in her autobiography My Heart Belongs, was secure and happy. She had close relationships with both her mother and father, as well as her siblings. Her autobiography details how the young actress had an instinctive ear for recreating musical sounds.

Martin's father, Preston Martin, was a lawyer and her mother, Juanita Presley, was a violin teacher. Although the doctors told Juanita that she would risk her life if she attempted to have another baby, she was determined to have a boy. Instead, she had Mary, who became quite a tomboy. Her birth was an event as all of the neighbors gathered around Juanita's bedroom window, waiting for the raising of a curtain to signal the baby’s arrival.

Her family had a barn and orchard that kept her entertained. She played with her older sister Geraldine (whom she called “Sister”), climbing trees and riding ponies. Martin adored her father. “He was a tall, good-looking, silver-haired, with the kindest brown eyes. Mother was the disciplinarian, but it was Daddy who could turn me into an angel with just one look” (p. 19). Martin, who said “I’d never understand the law” (p. 19), began singing outside the courtroom where her father worked every Saturday night at a bandstand where the town band played. She sang in a trio of little girls dressed in bellhop uniforms. “Even in those days without microphones, my high piping voice carried all over the square. I have always thought that I inherited my carrying voice from my father” (p. 19).

She remembered having a photographic memory as a child, making it easy to memorize songs, as well as get her through school tests. She got her first taste of singing solo at a fire hall, where she soaked up the crowd’s appreciation. “Sometimes I think that I cheated my own family and my closest friends by giving to audiences so much of the love I might have kept for them. But that’s the way I was made; I truly don't think I could help it” (p. 20). Martin’s craft was developed by seeing movies and becoming a mimic. She’d win prizes for looking, acting and dancing like Ruby Keeler and singing exactly like Bing Crosby. “Never, never, never can I say I had a frustrating childhood. It was all joy. Mother used to say she never had seen such a happy child—that I awakened each morning with a smile. I don’t remember that, but I do remember that I never wanted to go to bed, to go to sleep, for fear I’d miss something” (p. 20).

Marriage[link]

As she grew older, Martin dated Benjamin Jackson Hagman while in high school, before being sent to the Ward-Belmont finishing school in Nashville, Tennessee. Besides imitating Fanny Brice at singing gigs, she thought school was dull and felt confined by the strict rules. She was homesick for Weatherford, her family and Hagman. During a visit, Mary and Benjamin persuaded Mary's mother to allow them to marry.^[1] They did, and by the age of 17, Martin was legally married, pregnant with her first child (Larry Hagman) and forced to leave finishing school. However she was happy to begin her new life. She soon learned that this life was nothing but “role playing” (p. 39).

Their honeymoon was at her parents' house, and Martin's dream of life with a family and a white-picket fence faded. “I was 17, a married woman without real responsibilities, miserable about my mixed-up emotions, afraid there was something awfully wrong with me because I didn’t enjoy being a wife. Worst of all, I didn't have enough to do” (p. 39). It was “Sister” who came to her rescue, suggesting that she should teach dance. “Sister” taught Martin her first real dance—the waltz clog. Martin perfectly imitated her first dance move, and she opened a dance studio. Here, she created her own moves, imitated the famous dancers she watched in the movies, and taught “Sister’s” waltz clog. “I was doing something I wanted to do—creating” (p. 44).

Early career[link]

Star for "Recording" on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street, Hollywood. She also has one for "Radio" at 6609 Hollywood Blvd.

Wanting to learn more moves, Martin went to California to attend the dance school at the Franchon and Marco School of the Theatre, and opened her own dance studio in Mineral Wells, Texas. She was given a ballroom studio with the premise that she would sing in the lobby every Saturday. There, she learned how to sing into a microphone and how to phrase blues songs. One day at work, she accidentally walked into the wrong room where auditions were being held. They asked her what key she’d like to sing “So Red Rose”. Having absolutely no idea what her key was, she sang regardless and got the job. She was hired to sing “So Red Rose” at the Fox Theater in San Francisco, followed by the Paramount Theater in Los Angeles. There would be one catch — she had to sing in the wings. She scored her first professional gig, unaware that she would soon be center stage.

Soon after, Martin learned that her studio had been burnt down by a man who thought dancing was a sin.^[2] She began to express her unhappiness. Her father gave her advice, saying that she was too young to be married. Martin left everything behind, including her young son, Larry, and went to Hollywood while her father handled the divorce for her. In Hollywood, Martin plunged herself into auditions—so many that she became known as “Audition Mary”. Her first professional audition and job was on a national radio network.^[3] Among Martin's first auditions in Hollywood, Martin sang, 'Indian Love Call'". After singing the song, “a tall, craggly man who looked like a mountain” told Martin that he thought she had something special. It was Oscar Hammerstein II (pp. 58–59). This marked the start of her career.

Later career[link]

Mary Martin struggled for nearly two years to break into show business. As a struggling young actress, Martin endured humorous and sometimes frightful luck trying to make it in the world, from car crashes leading to vocal instruction, unknowingly singing in front of Oscar Hammerstein II, to her final break on Broadway granted by the very prominent producer, Lawrence Schwab.

Using her maiden name, Mary Martin began pursuing a performing career singing on radio in Dallas and in nightclubs in Los Angeles. Her performance at one club impressed a theatrical producer, and he cast her in a play in New York. That production did not open, but she got a role in Cole Porter's Leave It to Me!. In that production, she became popular on Broadway and received attention in the national media singing "My Heart Belongs to Daddy". With that one song in the second act, she became a star 'overnight'."^[4] Martin reprised the song in Night and Day, a Hollywood film about Cole Porter, in which she played herself auditioning for Porter (Cary Grant).

"My Heart Belongs to Daddy" catapulted her career and became very special to Mary — she even sang it to her ailing father in his hospital bed while he was in a coma. Martin did not learn immediately that her father had died. Headlines read "Daddy Girl Sings About Daddy as Daddy Dies." Because of the show’s demanding schedule, Martin was unable to attend her father’s funeral.^[5]

She received the Donaldson Award and the New York Film Critics Circle Award in 1943 for One Touch of Venus. A special Tony came her way in 1948 for "spreading theatre to the rest of the country while the originals perform in New York." In 1955 and 1956, she received, first, a Tony Award for Peter Pan, and then an Emmy for appearing in the same role on television. She also received Tony Awards for South Pacific, and, in 1959, for The Sound of Music.

Peter Pan statue in Martin's hometown of Weatherford in Parker County, Texas

Although she appeared in nine films in her career, all between 1938 and 1943,^[7] she was generally passed over for the filmed version of the musical plays in which she starred. She herself once explained that she did not enjoy making films, because she did not have the "connection" with an audience that she had in live performances. The closest she ever came to preserving her stage performances were her famous television appearances as Peter Pan (she had starred in a musical version on Broadway in 1954, and this production was subsequently performed on NBC television in RCA's compatible color in 1955, 1956 and 1960). While Martin did not enjoy making theatrical films, she did apparently enjoy appearing on television, as she did frequently. Her last feature film appearance was a cameo as herself in MGM's Main Street to Broadway in 1953.^[8]

Martin made an appearance in 1980 in a Royal Variety Performance in London, performing "Honeybun" from South Pacific.

While visiting San Francisco in 1982 she was involved in a traffic accident that left her with two fractured ribs, a fractured pelvis, and a punctured lung. Also in the accident were Janet Gaynor, who died two years later from complications from her injuries, Gaynor's husband Paul Gregory, who survived, and Martin's press agent Ben Washer, who died in the accident.^[9][10]

Martin appeared in the play Legends with Carol Channing in a one-year US national tour, opening in Dallas on January 9, 1986.^[11]

She received the Kennedy Center Honors, an annual honor for career achievements, in 1989.

Death[link]

Mary Martin died a month before her 77th birthday from colorectal cancer at her home in Rancho Mirage, California on November 3, 1990.^[12] She is buried in East Greenwood Cemetery in Weatherford, Texas.

Work[link]

Stage[link]

• Leave It to Me! (1938) (Broadway)
• One Touch of Venus (1943) (Broadway)
• Pacific 1860 (1946) (London)
• Lute Song (1946) (Broadway)
• Annie Get Your Gun (1947) (national tour)
• South Pacific (1949) (Broadway)
• South Pacific (1951) (London)
• Kind Sir (1953) (Broadway)
• Peter Pan (1954) (Broadway)
• The Skin of Our Teeth (1955) (Broadway, Washington DC, and Paris)
• The Sound of Music (1959) (Broadway)
• Jennie (1963) (Broadway)
• Hello, Dolly! (1965) (London and world tour)
• I Do! I Do! (1966) (Broadway and national tour)
• Together on Broadway: Mary Martin & Ethel Merman (1977) (Broadway)
• Do You Turn Somersaults? (1978) (Broadway and national tour)
• Legends (1986) (national tour)

References[link]

• Davis, Ronald L. (2008). Mary Martin, Broadway Legend. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-3905-0.  Free preview at Amazon.com

Further reading[link]

• Martin, Mary (1976). My Heart Belongs. New York: Morrow. ISBN 0-688-03009-2. 
• Kirkwood, James, Jr. (1989). Diary of a Mad Playwright: Perilous Adventures on the Road with Mary Martin and Carol Channing, about production of the play "Legends" (Dutton)

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mary Martin

• Mary Martin at the Internet Broadway Database
• Mary Martin at the Internet Movie Database
• Photos of Mary Martin, hosted by the Portal to Texas History

Alice Faye
from The Gang's All Here (1943)
Born	Alice Jeanne Leppert (1915-05-05)May 5, 1915 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	May 9, 1998(1998-05-09) (aged 83) Rancho Mirage, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress, singer
Years active	1931–98
Spouse	Phil Harris (1941–95) (his death) 2 children Tony Martin (1937–40)

Alice Faye (May 5, 1915 – May 9, 1998) was an American actress and singer, called by The New York Times "one of the few movie stars to walk away from stardom at the peak of her career."^[1] She is remembered first for her stardom at 20th Century Fox and, later, as the radio comedy partner of her husband, bandleader and comedian Phil Harris. She is also often associated with the Academy Award–winning standard "You'll Never Know", which she introduced in the 1943 musical film Hello, Frisco, Hello.

Early life[link]

Born Alice Jeanne Leppert in New York City, she was the daughter of a New York police officer of German descent and his Irish-American wife, Charles and Alice Moffit Leppert. Faye's entertainment career began in vaudeville as a chorus girl (she failed an audition for the Ziegfeld Follies when it was revealed she was too young), before she moved to Broadway and a featured role in the 1931 edition of George White's Scandals. By this time, she had adopted her stage name and first reached a radio audience on Rudy Vallée's The Fleischmann Hour (1932–1934), where she may have met her future husband and comedy partner, Phil Harris.

Film career[link]

Alice Faye (center) with Jack Haley (left), Don Ameche, and Tyrone Power (right), in a trailer for Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938)

Meanwhile, she gained her first major film break in 1934, when Lilian Harvey abandoned the lead role in a film version of George White's 1935 Scandals, in which Vallee was also to appear. Hired first to perform a musical number with Vallee, Faye ended up as the female lead. She became a hit with film audiences of the 1930s, particularly when Fox production head Darryl F. Zanuck made her his protégé. He softened Faye from a wisecracking show girl to a youthful, yet somewhat motherly figure such as she played in a few Shirley Temple films.^[2]

Faye also received a physical makeover, from being something of a singing version of Jean Harlow to sporting a softer look with a more natural tone to her blonde hair and more mature makeup, including losing the notorious "pencil" eyebrows. Considered less than serious as an actress and more than serious as a singer, Faye nailed what many critics consider her best acting performance in 1937's In Old Chicago. The film was also extremely memorable for its twenty-minute ending, a recreation of the Great Chicago Fire, a scene so dangerous that women, except for the main stars, were banned from the set. Her co-stars in that film were Tyrone Power and Don Ameche, two of Faye's most frequent co-stars, as it was customary for studios to pair its contract players together in more than one film.

Faye, Power, and Ameche were reunited for 1938's Alexander's Ragtime Band. Although the film was mainly designed to showcase over twenty Irving Berlin songs, Faye again received strong reviews and the film was considered a landmark from changing the status of musicals as light, frivolous fare to a respectable film genre. One of the most expensive films for its time, it also became one of the most successful musicals of the 1930s.

By 1939, Faye was named one of the top ten box office draws in Hollywood. That year she made Rose of Washington Square with Tyrone Power. Although a big hit, the film was supposedly based on the real life of comedienne Fanny Brice, and Brice sued Fox for stealing her story.

Because of her bankable status, Fox occasionally placed Faye in films that were put together more for the sake of making money than showcasing Faye's talents. Films like Tail Spin and Barricade (both 1939) were more dramatic in nature than regular Faye films and often did not contain any songs for Faye to sing. But due to her immense popularity, none of the films that she made in the 1930s and 1940s lost money.

In 1940, Faye played one of her most memorable roles, the title role in the musical biopic Lillian Russell. Faye always named this film as one of her personal favorites, but it was also her most challenging role. The tight corsets Faye wore for this picture caused Faye to collapse on the set several times and it shrunk her waist six inches.

After declining the lead role Down Argentine Way, due to an illness, Faye was replaced by the studio's newest musical star, Betty Grable. She was paired as a sister act opposite Grable in the film Tin Pan Alley, later that same year. During the making of the picture, a rumor arose that there was a rivalry between Faye and Grable. In a Biography interview, Faye admitted that the Fox publicity department built up the rumor, but she was otherwise very close to Grable. Over time, Grable would become Fox's top musical star, but her value did nothing to diminish Faye's success. Grable would also take many movie roles that were initially designed with Faye in mind.

In 1941, Fox began to place Faye in musicals photographed in Technicolor, a trademark for the studio in the 1940s. She frequently played a performer, often one moving up in society, allowing for situations that ranged from the poignant to the comic. Films such as Week-End in Havana (1941) and That Night in Rio (1941), where she played a Brazilian aristocrat, made good use of Faye's husky singing voice, solid comic timing, and flair for carrying off the era's starry-eyed romantic storylines.

In 1943, after taking a year off to have her first daughter, Faye starred in the Technicolor musical Hello, Frisco, Hello. Released at the height of World War II, the film became one of Faye's personal favorites and one of her highest-grossing pictures for Fox. It was in this film that Faye sang "You'll Never Know." The song won the Academy Award for Best Song for 1943 and the sheet music for the song sold over a million copies. However, since there was a clause in her contract (as was the case with most other Fox stars) stating that she could not officially record any of her movie songs, other singers like Dick Haymes (whose version hit #1 for four weeks), Frank Sinatra, and Rosemary Clooney have been more associated with the song than Faye. However, it is still often considered Faye's signature song. That year, Faye was once again named one of the top box office draws in the world.

End of motion picture career[link]

As Faye's star continued to ascend during the war years, family life became more important to her, especially with the arrival of a second daughter, Phyllis. After her birth, Faye signed a new contract with Fox to make only one picture a year, with the option of a second one, in order to give Faye a chance to spend more time with her family. But Faye also used this as an opportunity to campaign for serious roles, turning down numerous scripts in the process.

Faye finally accepted the lead role in Fallen Angel, whose title became only too telling, as circumstances turned out. Designed ostensibly as Faye's vehicle, the film all but became her celluloid epitaph when Zanuck, trying to build his new protege Linda Darnell, ordered many Faye scenes cut and Darnell emphasized. When Faye saw a screening of the final product, she drove away from the Fox studio refusing to return, feeling she had been undercut deliberately by Zanuck.

According to her obituary in the New York Times, "Ms. Faye handed the keys to her dressing room to the studio gate guard and drove off the lot." In 1987 she told an interviewer, "When I stopped making pictures, it didn't bother me because there were so many things I hadn't done. I had never learned to run a house. I didn't know how to cook. I didn't know how to shop. So all these things filled all those gaps."^[3]

Zanuck hit back, it is said, by having Faye blackballed for breach of contract, effectively ending her film career. Released in 1945, Fallen Angel was Faye's last film as a major Hollywood star. Ironically, for several years after, Zanuck tried to bring Faye back onto the screen with major roles in films such as The Dolly Sisters, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Razor's Edge, and Wabash Avenue, which would give her the chance to work opposite her husband, Phil Harris.

Seventeen years after the Fallen Angel debacle, Faye went before the cameras again, in 1962's State Fair. While Faye received good reviews, the film was not a great success, and she made only infrequent cameo appearances in films thereafter, most notable playing a secretary in the critically panned all-star flop, Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood, in 1976.

Marriage and radio career[link]

Faye's first marriage, to Tony Martin in 1937, ended in divorce in 1940. A year later, however, she married Phil Harris. This marriage became a plotline on an episode of the hit radio show hosted by Harris's then-employer, Jack Benny, which struck platinum, both in Faye's personal and in her professional life.

The couple had two daughters, Alice (b. 1942) and Phyllis (b. 1944), along with Harris's adopted son from his first marriage, Phil Harris, Jr. (b. 1935), and they began working in radio together as Faye's film career declined. First, they teamed to host a variety show on NBC, The Fitch Bandwagon, in 1946. Originally conceived as a music showcase, the Harrises' gently-tart comedy sketches made them the show's breakout stars. By 1948, Fitch bowed away as sponsor in favour of Rexall, the pharmaceutical giant, and the show, now a strictly situation comedy with a music interlude each from husband and wife, was renamed The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show.

Harris's comic talent was already familiar through his tenure on The Jack Benny Show, where he played Benny's wisecracking, jive-talking, hipster bandleader. With their own show revamped to a sitcom, bandleader-comdian Harris and singer-actress Faye played themselves, raising two precocious children in and out of slightly zany situations, mostly involving Harris's band guitarist Frank Remley (Elliott Lewis), obnoxious delivery boy Julius Abruzzio (Walter Tetley, familiar as nephew Leroy on The Great Gildersleeve), Robert North as Faye's fictitious deadbeat brother, Willie, and sponsor's representative Mr. Scott (Gale Gordon), and usually involving bumbling, malapropping Harris needing rescue from acidly-loving Faye.

The Harrises' two daughters were played on radio by Jeanine Roos and Anne Whitfield; written mostly by Ray Singer and Dick Chevillat, the show stayed on NBC radio as a fixture until 1954.

Faye singing ballads and swing numbers in her honey contralto voice was a regular highlight of the show, as was a knack for tart one-liners equal to her husband's. The show's running gags also included references to Alice's wealth from her film career ("I'm only trying to protect the wife of the money I love" was a typical Harris drollery) and occasional barbs by Faye aimed at her rift with Zanuck, usually referencing Fallen Angel in one or another way.

Later life and death[link]

Faye and Harris continued various projects, individually and together, for the rest of their lives. Faye made a return to Broadway after forty-three years in a revival of Good News, with her old Fox partner John Payne (who was replaced by Gene Nelson). In later years, Faye became a spokeswoman for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, promoting the virtues of an active senior lifestyle. The Faye-Harris marriage endured until Harris's death in 1995; before that, the couple donated a large volume of their entertainment memorabilia to Harris's hometown Linton, Indiana.

Three years after her husband's death, Alice Faye died in Rancho Mirage, California from stomach cancer, four days after her 83rd birthday. She was cremated and her ashes rest beside those of Phil Harris at the mausoleum of the Forest Lawn Cemetery (Cathedral City) near Palm Springs, California. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in recognition of her contribution to Motion Pictures at 6922 Hollywood Boulevard. The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show remains a favourite of old-time radio collectors.

Popularity and legacy[link]

Her voice, the New York Times wrote in her obituary, was "inviting." Irving Berlin was once quoted as saying that he would choose Faye over any other singer to introduce his songs, and George Gershwin and Cole Porter called her the "best female singer in Hollywood in 1937."^[4] During her years as a musical superstar, Alice Faye managed to introduce twenty-three songs to the hit parade, more than any other female Hollywood movie star. During her peak years, she was often considered the female equivalent to Bing Crosby.^{[citation needed]}

Although Faye has always had many fans around the globe, she was never more popular anywhere else than she was in England. In The Alice Faye Movie Book,^{[citation needed]} a particular article is devoted to Faye's popularity there. The author of the article, Arthur Nicholson, mentions that Faye was enormously popular there even in her Harlow days. As opposed to other films shown in England, which were usually shown for three days a week, all of Faye's films were given the rare privilege of being played for an entire week. The article goes on to mention that, even after Faye retired in 1945, her old films still made as much money (in some cases, even more) as current releases. When Faye returned to the screen for State Fair in 1962, the film broke records in England. In 1966, the BBC aired Alexander's Ragtime Band on television and soon other Faye films followed. As of the writing of the article, the BBC stated that there were more requests for Faye's pictures than any other star's.^{[citation needed]}

Film appearances[link]