R.I.P. Betty Jane Rhodes

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Reza
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Re: R.I.P. Betty Jane Rhodes

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London Independent


Betty Jane Rhodes: Actress and singer who charmed
the US as a wartime sweetheart

Tom Vallance
Monday, 30 January 2012


Though Betty Jane Rhodes, a pretty, blue-eyed
blonde singer-actress with a vivacious smile and
buoyant personality, rarely moved out of the "B"
movie ranks, she will be recalled fondly for her
lively renderings of such wartime numbers as "The
Fleet's In" and '"On the Swing Shift".

Her place in the history of popular song is
secured by her having introduced on screen one of
the great songs of wartime longing, "I Don't Want
To Walk Without You", which she sang in the film
Sweater Girl (1942). It has become a durable
standard, about which Irving Berlin once said
that of all the songs by other composers, "I
Don't Want To Walk Without You" was the one he
would have been most proud to have written. Frank
Loesser, who wrote the words to Jule Styne's
melody, wrote in his diary, "Irving Berlin came
in today and spent a solid hour telling me that
'Walk' is the best song he ever heard. He played
and sang it over, bar by bar, explaining why it's
the best song he ever heard. I was flattered like crazy."

Born in 1921 in Rockford, Illinois, Rhodes
displayed her vocal talent to her
non-professional parents at an early age, and
began a career broadcasting and making records at
the age of eight. She was 15 when Paramount
signed her to a movie contract, and she made her
screen debut (billed as Jane Rhodes) in EA
Dupont's melodramatic Forgotten Faces (1936) as
an adopted child whose father (Herbert Marshall)
was jailed for killing his wife's lover.

She then played the kid sister of Marsha Hunt,
and sang on screen for the first time, in a
comedy western, Arizona Raiders (1936), starring
"Buster" Crabbe, in which her crooning of the
sentimental classic, "My Melancholy Baby"
provided a relaxing moment amid the screwball
escapades of Crabbe as an inept outlaw. The
studio then loaned her to Universal to partner
Grant Withers in the serial Jungle Jim (1937).

At RKO she had a small role in the classic
account of would-be actresses, Stage Door (1937).
Her parts in Life of the Party (1937) and Having
Wonderful Time (1938) were also small, but in
each film she had one song, and in Universal's
Oh, Johnny How You Can Love (1940) she sang the
popular title song, a hit in 1917 but an even
greater success when revived in the '30s. On
radio she had her own musical show in 1939, and
the following year she and bandleader David Rose
headed the cast of the radio programme California Melodies.

On screen, she had a song as Tim Holt's
sweetheart in Along the Rio Grande (1941), and
was one of the singers who performed the title
tune of the Rodgers and Hart musical that proved
a major disappointment, They Met in Argentina
(1941). The Fleet's In (1941), however, was one
of Paramount's biggest hits, with a superior
score by Victor Schertzinger and Johnny Mercer.
Rhodes got the film off to a fine start with her
sparkling rendition of the title song ("Hey there
mister, you'd better hide your sister 'cause the
fleet's in"), sung to an audience of appreciative, wolf-whistling sailors.

Although she had little else to do (the film's
stars were Dorothy Lamour and William Holden),
the studio noted the impression she made and
rewarded her with a starring role in Sweater
Girl, in which she joined Eddie Bracken and June
Preisser as collegiates whose efforts to mount a
campus musical are hampered by the murder of
several students. Though the mixture of music,
comedy and homicide was sometimes uneasy, the
film benefited from its four songs by Jule Styne
and Frank Loesser, and Rhodes had the best of
them - a slightly suggestive number, "I Said No",
which was later used in cabaret by Lena Horne,
plus "I Don't Want to Walk Without You". Styne
had first worked with Loesser at Republic, home
of westerns and serials, and he told me that one
of the tunes he played to Loesser when they first
met was that which was to become "I Don't Want to
Walk Without You". "Frank said, 'Sh! That's too
good a melody to waste at Republic � we'll take it to Paramount.'"

In Sweater Girl, the chorus is first sung by a
student, Johnny (Johnnie Johnston), who has just
composedit and sings it down the telephone to his
collegiate friends. When they ask him to sing it
again, all they hear is a gurgle (Johnston is
being strangled), but later in the film Rhodes
sings the complete song, including its verse. An
enormous hit, it was recorded by several stars
including Rhodes, but the best-selling version
was by Harry James and his orchestra, with Helen Forrest singing the vocal.

After taking part in the all-star musical Star
Spangled Rhythm, featuring Harold Arlen and
Johnny Mercer's "On The Swing Shift", Rhodes was
given co-star billing with Ann Miller and Johnnie
Johnston in Priorities on Parade (1942), in which
she and Johnstone sang Styne and Loesser's
"You're in Love with Someone Else (But I'm in
Love with You)", then she received top billing in
Salute for Three (1943) as a radio singer
romantically linked with a war hero (MacDonald Carey) for publicity.

You Can't Ration Love (1944) co-starred her with
Johnston in a weak script about college girls
rationing dates because of the wartime shortage
of eligible males. When her contract expired in
1944, Paramount let her go, but she continued a
radio career, performing with Fred Allen, Red
Skelton and others, and made recordings for Decca
and RCA Victor, including two big sellers,
"Rumours Are Flying" in 1946 and "Buttons and
Bows" in 1948, her recording of the latter
remaining in the hit parade charts for over two months.

In 1945 she married Willet H Brown, a
broadcasting pioneer who co-founded the Mutual
Broadcasting System. Rhodes was later dubbed "The
First Lady of Television", having her own show on
NBC on Sunday nights, and she continued to appear
in cabaret until the 1960s. She and Brown had one
child, and Rhodes became stepmother to his three
children from a former marriage.

Betty Jane Rhodes, actress and singer: born
Rockford, Illinois 21 April 1921; married 1945
Willet H Brown (died 1993; one child, and three
stepchildren); died 27 December 2011.
Damien
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Re: R.I.P. Betty Jane Rhodes

Post by Damien »

I liked her in Sweater Girl.
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
Reza
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R.I.P. Betty Jane Rhodes

Post by Reza »

Tuesday, January 10, 2012 http://westernboothill.blogspot.com/



RIP Betty Jane Rhodes

Betty Jane Rhodes [1921- 2011]

Betty Jane was born on April 21, 1921 in
Rockford, Illinois and was singing on radio at
age 9. Her rich contralto voice and good looks
earned her a Paramount contract at age 15. She
made her film debut in Forgotten Faces (1936),
and sang My Melancholy Baby in Arizona Raiders
later that year. By World War II, she was
starring in minor musicals of her own, including
Sweater Girl and You Can't Ration Love. She
recorded for Decca and RCA, scoring hits with
Rumors Are Flying and Buttons and Bows. She
had an early TV show, "Adventures in Rhythm," on
the Mutual Broadcasting System, co-founded by her
husband, Willet H. Brown. Betty Jane died on December 26, 2011.

RHODES, Betty Jane
Born: 4/21/1921, Rockford, Illinois, U.S.A.
Died: 12/26/2011, U.S.A.

Betty Jane Rhodes' westerns - actress:
The Arizona Raiders - 1936 (Lenta Lindsay)
Along the Rio Grande - 1941 (Mary Loring)
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