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Introduction
- University Press of Mississippi
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Alice Faye may be remembered by film historians as much for her abrupt exit from the movies in 1945 as for her preceding eleven years of Hollywood stardom. Tired of dancing, literally, to the tunes that mogul Darryl F. Zanuck put on the silver screen in the lavish musicals produced by Twentieth Century-Fox, she sought meatier roles, the first of which was in Otto Preminger’s Fallen Angel. When Zanuck butchered the film to make a Roman holiday for another Fox actress, Linda Darnell, Alice walked out of the screening room, paused to write an unrepeatable note to Zanuck, then left the studio for good. Few movie stars of Alice Faye’s caliber had ever done such a thing. Only Greta Garbo’s retirement from M-G-M after completing Two-Faced Woman in 1941 compared, and only Garbo took her retirement from the screen as seriously as did Alice Faye. Many Hollywood observers, including Zanuck, thought that Alice would eventually return to movies. Alice proved them wrong, staying away from movies entirely until she made State Fair in 1962, and then again until the late 1970s, when she made cameo appearances in a couple of minor films. Fortunately for her fans, Alice Faye’s life as an entertainer did not begin and end with her film career. To be sure, between 1934 and 1945 she occupied a prime position in the golden age of the big studio system. As the top female star at Twentieth Century-Fox for most of that time, Alice participated fully in the overblown spectacle of Hollywood ritual: the pre3 Introduction mieres, the nightclubs, and the day-to-day grind of fittings and photo shoots, filming and interviews. On screen and at the box office, she held her own against top musical stars from rival studios, such as Jeanette MacDonald, Eleanor Powell, and Ginger Rogers. Yet Alice was involved in another golden age as well—the golden age of radio. She first sang for Rudy Vallée’s Fleischmann Hour, one of the most popular programs on the air at the dawn of commercial radio in the early 1930s. While pursuing her film career, she did guest spots on Lux Radio Theatre and spent a season as a regular on Hal Kemp’s Music from Hollywood program. She witnessed the shift in popularity from radio to television with the program she and her husband, bandleader and comedian Phil Harris, produced. It began in 1946 as the Fitch Bandwagon, developed into the Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, and was finally cancelled in 1954, when many radio stations began adopting an all-music format in prime time. She also made repeated appearances on the single most popular radio program of all time, the Jack Benny Show, on which Phil Harris was a regular. In many ways Alice Faye’s radio career proved as significant as her film work. She certainly spent as many years performing in the medium. Radio introduced Alice Faye to the nation, and made her a household name well before her celluloid image flashed across the screens of local movie houses. Radio kept Alice’s name and, more important, her voice alive once her fans could no longer count on a steady stream of Alice Faye movies. What made Alice Faye such a popular performer in both radio and film was, of course, her voice and natural demeanor. These were the common threads of Alice’s life, contributing to her success and binding together the episodic activities and tumultuous events of her life. Entertainer and popular music historian Michael Feinstein called Alice’s voice “infinitely compelling.” From the age of sixteen, when famous New York restauranteur Nils T. Granlund, known in the press of the day simply as N.T.G., pulled her out of the chorus, Alice demonstrated an uncanny ability to put over a song. That talent gave her the means to support herself and her family, to move in circles far removed from those into which she had 4 INTRODUCTION [3.85.224.214] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:04 GMT) been born, and change entirely the direction her life might have taken otherwise. Alice once stated that, “The cold facts are that I started with virtually nothing and made it to the point where, in 1940, I was the number -one box office female star in America,” but a gift such as her voice could hardly be considered “virtually nothing.” Cesar Romero stated it...