Francia White

Last updated
Francia White Francia White Bell Telephone Hour.JPG
Francia White

Francia White (1909 - October 22, 1984) was an American soprano who had an active career in concerts, operas, operettas, radio, television, and film during the late 1920s through the 1940s. She began her career as a vaudeville performer in her late teens and then began singing in more serious classical music repertoire during the mid-1930s. She drew the attention of Hollywood and began working as a ghost singer for films in 1934. She soon broke into radio in 1935 and was highly active in that medium until 1941. On television she starred on the musical variety show, The Bell Telephone Hour , from 1940-1942. In addition to her radio work, she is chiefly remembered for helping to launch Edwin Lester's Los Angeles Civic Light Opera in 1938 and was one of their main leading ladies up through 1942.

Biography

Born in Greenville, Texas, White's family moved to the San Gabriel Valley in California when she was nine. She attended Covina High School during which time she began studying voice under Louis Graveure. With Graveure's encouragement she became a vaudeville performer after high school. She eventually entered Occidental College in 1930 where she was a voice major for a year, but then dropped out to work in vaudeville again in 1931. [1]

After three years touring in vaudeville shows, White became the headlining performer at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in 1934. Her work drew the attention of 20th Century Fox and she was soon working as a ghost singer for Hollywood films during the 1930s. Her first film was The Mighty Barnum , singing the role of Jenny Lind for Virginia Bruce. Her work as a ghost singer caught the ears of a radio executive at NBC Radio City Studios (located at the radio station at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City). She was offered a contract in 1935 and sang regularly for fifteen months on a few different radio programs with the company. She then became a regular performer with Nelson Eddy on The Voice of Firestone in 1936 and The Chase and Sanborn Hour in 1938. [1] She was also a regular featured performer on The Ford Sunday Evening Hour . In 1939 she had her own musical variety program on WFAN with James Melton. She and Melton were later the first hosts/featured performers of the television program The Bell Telephone Hour during the early 1940s.

White also sang in operas and more serious concert repertoire at the Hollywood Bowl during the 1930s. [1] She became a regular performer at the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera during the late 1930s and early 1940s, notably starring in the company's very first production as Mitzi in Franz Schubert's Blossom Time in 1938. Other LACLO roles included Marianne Beaunoir in Sigmund Romberg's The New Moon (1938), Princess Helene in Oscar Straus's Waltz Dream (1939), the title heroine in Victor Herbert's Naughty Marietta (1941), and Nina in Rudolf Friml's The Firefly (1942). [2]

White's career was tragically struck short in 1943 when she developed a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis that forced her to retire. She battled the disease for the rest of the life. She died in 1984 in Los Angeles County, California.

Related Research Articles

Kathryn Grayson American actress

Kathryn Grayson was an American actress and coloratura soprano.

Dorothy Lamour American actress and singer (1914–1996)

Dorothy Lamour was an American actress and singer. She is best remembered for having appeared in the Road to... movies, a series of successful comedies starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

Cliff Edwards American singer and actor

Clifton Avon "Cliff" Edwards, nicknamed "Ukulele Ike", was an American actor, musician and singer. He enjoyed considerable popularity in the 1920s and early 1930s, specializing in jazzy renditions of pop standards and novelty tunes. He had a number one hit with "Singin' in the Rain" in 1929. He also did voices for animated cartoons later in his career, and he is best known as the voice of Jiminy Cricket in Walt Disney's Pinocchio (1940) and Fun and Fancy Free (1947), and Dandy (Jim) Crow in Walt Disney's Dumbo (1941).

Penny Singleton American actress (1908–2003)

Penny Singleton was an American actress and labor leader. During her 60-year career, Singleton appeared as the comic-strip heroine Blondie Bumstead in a series of 28 motion pictures from 1938 until 1950 and the popular Blondie radio program from 1939 until 1950. Singleton also provided the voice of Jane Jetson in the animated series The Jetsons from 1962 to 1963.

Alice Faye American actress and singer (1915–1998)

Alice Faye was an American actress and singer. A musical star of 20th Century-Fox in the 1930s and 1940s, Faye starred in such films as On the Avenue (1937) and Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938). She is often associated with the Academy Award–winning standard "You'll Never Know", which she introduced in the 1943 musical film Hello, Frisco, Hello.

Milburn Stone American actor

Hugh Milburn Stone was an American actor, best known for his role as "Doc" on the CBS Western series Gunsmoke.

Lillian Randolph American actress and singer (1914/1915 – 1980)

Lillian Randolph was an American actress and singer, a veteran of radio, film, and television. She worked in entertainment from the 1930s until shortly before her death. She appeared in hundreds of radio shows, motion pictures, short subjects, and television shows.

Judy Canova American comedian, actress, singer, and radio personality

Judy Canova, born Juliette Canova, was an American comedian, actress, singer, and radio personality. She appeared on Broadway and in films. She hosted her own self-titled network radio program, a popular series broadcast from 1943 to 1955.

Billy Gilbert American actor, comedian, director and writer (1894–1971)

William Gilbert Barron was an American actor, comedian, director and writer. He was known for his comic sneeze routines. He appeared in over 200 feature films, short subjects and television shows beginning in 1929.

Frances Langford American actress (1913–2005)

Julia Frances Newbern-Langford was an American singer and actress who was popular during the Golden Age of Radio and made film and television appearances for over two decades.

Blossom Rock American actress (1895–1978)

Edith Marie Blossom MacDonald, also known as Blossom Rock, was an American actress of vaudeville, stage, film and television. During her career she was also billed as Marie Blake or Blossom MacDonald. Her younger sister was screen actress and singer Jeanette MacDonald. Rock is probably best known for her role as "Grandmama" on the 1960s macabre/black comedy sitcom The Addams Family.

Gloria Jean American actress and singer (1926–2018)

Gloria Jean was an American actress and singer who starred or co-starred in 26 feature films from 1939 to 1959, and made numerous radio, television, stage, and nightclub appearances. She is probably best remembered today for her appearance with W.C. Fields in the film Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941).

Pert Kelton American actress (1907–1968)

Pert L. Kelton was an American stage, movie, radio, and television actress. She was the first actress who played Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason and earlier, during the 1930s, was a prominent comedic supporting and leading actress in Hollywood films such as Gregory La Cava's Bed of Roses with Constance Bennett and Raoul Walsh's The Bowery with Wallace Beery and George Raft. She performed in a dozen Broadway productions between 1925 and 1968. However, her career was interrupted in the 1950s as a result of blacklisting, leading to her departure from The Honeymooners.

James Melton American opera singer

James Melton, a popular singer in the 1920s and early 1930s, later began a career as an operatic singer when tenor voices went out of style in popular music around 1932–35. His singing talent was similar to that of his contemporary Richard Crooks and baritones John Charles Thomas and Nelson Eddy who sang popular music but also had operatic careers.

Ferris Taylor American actor

Ferris Taylor was an American film actor and vaudeville performer.

Barbara Jo Allen American actress (1906–1974)

Barbara Jo Allen was an American actress. She was also known as Vera Vague, the spinster character she created and portrayed on radio and in films during the 1940s and 1950s. She based the character on a woman she had seen delivering a PTA literature lecture in a confused manner. As Vague, she popularized the catch phrase "You dear boy!"

Walter Cassel was an American operatic baritone and actor. He began his career singing on the radio during the mid-1930s and appeared in a couple of Hollywood musical films in the late 1930s. He made his first stage appearances in a handful of Broadway productions during the late 1930s and early 1940s. He began his opera career at the Metropolitan Opera in 1942, and went on to have a long and fruitful association with that house that lasted until his retirement from the stage in 1974. In addition to working with the Met, Cassel was also a regular performer with the New York City Opera between 1948 and 1954 and worked frequently as a freelance artist with important opera companies on the international stage as well as in the United States.

Jane Morgan (actress) American actress

Jane Morgan was a British-born American actress and singer whose career encompassed concert halls, vaudeville, the legitimate stage, radio, television, and film, best known as Eve Arden's nosy landlady Mrs. Davis on the radio and television versions of Our Miss Brooks.

Annamary Dickey American soprano and actress

Annamary Dickey, also known as Annamary Dickey Laue, was an American soprano and actress in operas, operettas, musicals, night clubs, and concerts who had an active performance career from the 1930s through the 1960s. She began her career as a regular performer with the Chautauqua Opera and the St. Louis Municipal Opera in the mid to late 1930s. In 1939 she won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air which earned her a contract with the Metropolitan Opera (Met). She was a soprano in mainly secondary roles at the Met from 1939 to 1944; appearing in productions of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, Massenet's Manon, Delibes' Lakmé, Charpentier's Louise, Bizet's Carmen, Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, and Smetana's The Bartered Bride. Her most significant role at the Met was as Musetta in Puccini's La bohème. A strikingly beautiful woman with a passion for fashionable clothes, she gained the moniker the "Glamour Girl of the 'Met'" and headlined a fashion campaign for Saks Fifth Avenue in 1945.

Jan Duggan American actress (1881–1977)

Jan Duggan was an American film and stage actress.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Irving Spiegel (June 29, 1941). "A 'GHOST SINGER'S SAGA". The New York Times .(subscription required)
  2. ↑ History of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera at broadwayla.org Archived October 21, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.