Alice Faye: A Life Beyond the Silver Screen

Bibliographical Essay

The following abbreviations are used in the notes: AF AMPAS The Alice Faye clipping files at the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences AMPAS The Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences CUOHP Columbia University Oral History Project JRC DPL John Rosenfield Collection, Dallas Public Library. NYPL Alice Faye clipping files in the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library, Lincoln Center PHAFC Phil Harris-Alice Faye Collection, Linton, Indiana PPC Pfizer Pharmaceutical Collection RBC Roy Bishop Collection RVC Rudy Vallée Collection, Thousand Oaks Public Library, Thousand Oaks, California SMU Ronald L. Davis Oral History Collection on the Performing Arts, Southern Methodist University TCF USC Twentieth Century-Fox Collection, Doheny Library, University of Southern California UC USC Universal Collection, Doheny Library, University of Southern California Introduction No single repository, collection, or book provides a comprehensive, chronologically complete account of Alice Faye’s personal and professional lives. 263 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY Evidence is scattered throughout the nation in printed works, manuscript collections, and other media. Three books provide biographical information about her, although none is a full-scale biography. Moshier, The Alice Faye Movie Book, is the best and most correct overview of her film career and includes a biographical sketch; Faye, Growing Older Staying Young, contains a disparate collection of reminiscences in her own voice; and Rivadue, Alice Faye, a Bio-Bibliography, provides a brief biographical sketch to accompany a bibliography of printed and recorded works by and about her. This latter has been criticized by fans for a number of errors, particularly in the section dealing with Faye’s recording career. An hourlong episode of Biography , produced by A&E and entitled Alice Faye: The Star Next Door, is perhaps the best general introduction to her life. Clipping files on Alice Faye have been maintained at NYPL shedding light primarily on her work and appearances on the East Coast. AMPAS has maintained clipping files on Alice, each of her movie productions, and gives a more comprehensive picture of her public life from the mid 1930s until her death. AMPAS has also maintained files on Faye’s husbands: singer Tony Martin, to whom she was married between 1938 and 1940, and bandleader /comedian Phil Harris, whom she married in 1941 and to whom she stayed married until his death in 1995. The most comprehensive archive is the privately held RBC, which consists of clippings as well as photographs, memorabilia, copies of scripts, voice and video recordings, etc. Specific information about each of Faye’s movie productions (annotated scripts, memos, conference minutes, etc.) can be found in the individual production files of TCF USC; UC USC’s contains detailed production notes from one of the few films Alice did on loan, You’re a Sweetheart. CUOHP contains interviews with Faye’s Fallen Angel (1945) costar Dana Andrews and Fox screenwriter Nunnally Johnson. SMU contains a wealth of interviews with performers and other employees who shed light not only on Alice Faye but the workings of Twentieth Century-Fox and its studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. These include Don Ameche, Lynn Bari, Pat Boone, Dan Dailey, Ann Doran, Gene Fowler Jr., Marjorie Fowler, 264 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY Otto Lang, David Raskin, Cesar Romero, and Harry Warren. Broad assessments of Alice Faye’s appeal and her place in the Hollywood pantheon came from Cesar Romero and Michael Feinstein’s liner notes to her album compilations Outtakes and Alternates, vol. 2, 1988, and More Gems, vol. 3, 1992, respectively; director Henry King’s foreword to Moshier, The Alice Faye Movie Book, obituaries written by Kelly Leiter and Florence King; Mordden, Hollywood Musicals; Smulyn, Selling Radio, and finally author interviews with Faye’s longtime fan and collector Roy Bishop (who has compiled statistics on her effectiveness as a song plugger). Her spokeswoman Jewel Baxter, book collaborator Dick Kleiner, childhood friend Betty Scharf, and daughters Phyllis Middleton and Alice Regan (author interviews) address the issue of Faye’s lack of confidence, her deep reserve, and her reluctance to talk about herself or her past history. 4 “infinitely compelling”: Feinstein, More Gems. 5 “The cold facts are”: Faye, 225. 5 “Alice never had a music lesson”: Romero, Outakes. 5 “In my late teens”: Leiter, “Alice Faye’s.” 6 “I missed my mother a lot”: Bishop, author interview. 6 “In her performances”: Dean 16. 7 “Expressing the human appetite”: Mordden 144. 7 “Her spirit was...