Rudy Vallee

Rudy Vallee (born July 28, 1901, Island Pond, Vermont, U.S.—died July 3, 1986, North Hollywood, California) was one of the most-popular American singers of the 1920s and ’30s and a film and stage star in the decades that followed. His collegiate style as a singing bandleader made him known across the United States.

Vallee’s mother, Katherine, was of Irish descent, and his father, Charles, came from a French Canadian family. Vallee and his four siblings were raised primarily in Maine, where Charles operated a drugstore. While growing up, Vallee developed an interest in music, learning to play the drums, the piano, the clarinet, and the saxophone.

Vallee attended the University of Maine (1921–22) before transferring to Yale University (Bachelor of Philosophy, 1927). As a college student he changed his name from Hubert to Rudy in honour of saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft, whom he idolized. He frequently performed in musical groups at Yale, and he spent a year in London (1924–25) playing the saxophone with the Savoy Havana Band. After forming his own dance band, first called the Yale Collegians and then renamed the Connecticut Yankees, he concentrated on singing. He used a hand megaphone, which became one of his trademarks, to amplify his suave light-toned voice.

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In 1928 Vallee signed his first recording contract, and he and his band quickly scored a number of hits. That same year they began performing at the exclusive Heigh-Ho Club in Manhattan. In addition to singing and leading the band, Vallee served as the announcer for the radio broadcasts from the club, thereby launching his radio career. The words with which he opened each broadcast—“Heigh-ho everybody, this is Rudy Vallee”—became his signature line. He subsequently hosted (1929–39) the music and variety show The Fleischmann Yeast Hour (renamed The Royal Gelatin Hour in 1936).

As one of the first radio crooners, Vallee became immensely popular. In the early 1930s thousands of women mobbed the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre, where he performed several shows a day, earning the impressive sum of $40,000 a week. Vallee’s intimate vocal style, well suited for radio, set the mold for younger singers such as Bing Crosby, Perry Como, and Frank Sinatra. Among the hundreds of songs that he recorded and performed on the radio were “My Time Is Your Time” (his theme song), “The Stein Song,” and “The Whiffenpoof Song.”

As his career flourished, Vallee moved into other aspects of show business, becoming a nightclub owner, a talent agent, a theatrical master of ceremonies, a composer, and a stage and film actor. Beginning in Hollywood as a singer in the film Vagabond Lover (1929), he evolved into an accomplished light comedian and a character actor. He appeared in more than 40 films, including Sweet Music (1935), The Palm Beach Story (1942), Unfaithfully Yours (1948), and Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955).

In 1942 Vallee joined the U.S. Coast Guard, becoming its bandleader, and throughout World War II he entertained the troops in every branch of the services. Meanwhile, he continued his work in radio as host of The Sealtest Hour (1940–43; also known as Vallee Varieties). During that time Vallee also bought a massive pink castle, Silvertip, which was built on a mountaintop in the Hollywood Hills. For some years thereafter celebrities, diplomats, and politicians flocked there to attend parties and to play tennis on its rooftop court.

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By the late 1950s, however, Vallee’s career was on the wane, owing in part to the diminished interest in radio crooners after the emergence of television and rock and roll. He experienced a minor comeback with a starring role in the Broadway musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961), which he reprised in a film adaptation (1967). Although he continued to act throughout the 1960s and ’70s, most of his work consisted of bit roles in films and guest appearances on TV series.

Vallee married four times. Among his wives were the movie star Jane Greer and the actress and model Eleanor Norris, who wrote (with Jill Amadio) a memoir of her life with Vallee, My Vagabond Lover: An Intimate Biography of Rudy Vallée (1996).