Band singers were a fixture in the era of Big Bands. And one Big Band that we feel we must cite in our ramblings about the Big Band Era is that of Vincent Lopez.
He along with Paul Whiteman, can be considered a leader in the Big Band explosion of the 1930s. Lopez and his Orchestra made their mark on radio in the early 20s and he began each broadcast with his catch phrase “Lopez Speaking.”
He and his orchestra can be seen in Paramount’s 1932 feature, The Big Broadcast. It’s difficult to stress how important Lopez was. At one time or another members of his band included Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, and Xavier Cugat. Lopez’ flamboyant piano style was the forerunner of Eddy Duchin and Liberace.
And, of course, there were girl singers. One of whom went onto Hollywood super stardom.
Most people don’t remember that some of the biggest female stars of the Golden Era started out as girl singers. Alice Faye sang with Rudy Vallee and his Orchestra on his very successful radio program before the movies catapulted her to stardom. And Dorothy Lamour (before she was Dorothy Lamour) sang with Herbie Kay and his orchestra –and even married Kay.
Many singers made the transition to films. Peggy Lee, Lena Horne, Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, Harriet Hilliard and others, made films but found their greater success in other fields, such as nightclubs, recording, or radio or television.
Vincent Lopez’ girl singers went on to varying degrees of success. Marion Hutton left Lopez and became the female vocalist with The Glenn Miller Orchestra. She made a few films, and is almost forgotten today.
However, her sister Betty Hutton, who sang with the Lopez Orchestra after Marion departed, went to Broadway then Hollywood and had one of the most spectacular careers of the 1940s. She was a top star for a decade before it all came crashing down.
Again, it was only natural for bands and singers to move on to HOLLYWOOD…
The studio machine constantly needed popular raw material assets, as with their program shorts to fill up the bill in their theaters. Whether its singers, comics or war heroes.
Just think of all those that became “Singing Cowboys” for example. Of course someone like Gene Autry was not known for his acting, but then he went on to become a lot richer than all the major stars combined just about.
Irving Berlin was a great songwriter, but made a lousy actor or even a singer of his own songs… Whereas songwriter, pianist, actor and singer Hoagy Carmichael could do it all with style.
Hoagy was even iconic enough to be wonderfully parodied in the TV show THE FLINTSTONES.
Peggy Lee was great just as a singing voice in movies, as with JOHNNY GUITAR and Disney’s LADY & THE TRAMP.
And Phil Harris wasn’t just a smash as the voice of Disney’s Baloo the bear in THE JUNGLE BOOK, he had more than just the Bare Necessities with his talent.
And then you have the reverse… actors playing great singers and band leaders. Like Larry Parks lip-syncing to Al Jolson’s singing in those two great bio-pics, or James Stewart making all the right moves to immortalize Glenn Miller on screen. As for the music in that movie, even Glenn’s widow said the studio musicians sounded better than his band. But of course that could all just be the usual studio PR bulls**t, or maybe the great stereo recordings and glorious technicolor had something to do with it.
Ironically, didn’t SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN kind of tie all this in?
Should have known you guys had Dottie, Betty and Peg up your sleeves!