Jane Pickens

The daughters of Mr. and Mrs. P.M. Pickens,[2] the Pickens sisters, Grace, Jane, Helen (1910–1984), and Patti (1914–1995), were born in Macon, Georgia, and grew up there and in Atlanta. Beginning when the girls were ages 4, 6 and 8,[3] their parents taught them to harmonize. Their father, a cotton broker, played the piano and their mother sang.[4]

At first the sisters sang for friends, then at churches and schools. The family moved to Park Avenue in Manhattan in 1932, and a test recording for Victor made such an impression with radio executives that they hired the sisters unseen. Promoted as "Three Little Maids From Dixie", they appeared in Thumbs Up on Broadway and in the movie Sitting Pretty.

Signed to Victor as Victor's answer to the popular Brunswick recording artists the Boswell Sisters, they recorded 25 sides for Victor from early 1932 until late 1934. Their records had a much more novel quality than the harder jazz-styled Boswell Sisters' records. Also, as 1932 Victor records had two- and three-part harmonizers, the Three X Sisters, with experimental sweet/swingy tunes, were among the most noted harmonizers of their day.

The Pickens group earned $1 million in five years but dissolved when two sisters left to get married and a fourth, Grace, who was the group's manager, also departed. Grace married U.S. District Attorney John T. Cahill.[5] Patti married radio actor Bob Simmons.

Of the sisters Jane Pickens, who arranged the group's numbers, was the most serious about music. She studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and the Fontainebleau in France and won fellowships at the Juilliard School.[3] She studied for two years with Marcella Sembrich, a Polish coloratura soprano.[2]

She sang in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 in a cast that included Fanny Brice and Gypsy Rose Lee. In 1940 she played opposite Ed Wynn in Boys and Girls Together on Broadway. Brooks Atkinson's review said she had "a most attractive voice."[6]

Pickens' other Broadway credits included Music in the Air (1951).[7]

Pickens pursued her music career alone and had wide-ranging success, from musical comedy to opera and nightclub engagements. She had the American Melody Hour on CBS radio and the Jane Pickens Show on NBC radio,[3] as well as a program on ABC television.

In 1954, Pickens appeared in a 15-minute ABC television musical series, The Jane Pickens Show, which was replaced in the spring by The Martha Wright Show.[8]

She frequently performed benefits for charitable causes, including events for orphans, hospitals, youths, veterans and the disabled. When her career tapered off in the late 1950s, she turned to running hundreds of fund-raising affairs. Among her favorite causes were the Salvation Army and research into heart disease and cerebral palsy, a condition that afflicted her daughter.

The Jane Pickens Theater in Newport

On June 6, 1928, at the age of 20, Pickens married Russell A. Clark[9] (or Clarke).[10] The marriage ended in divorce.

She became a noted figure at balls and other society events in New York City, Long Island and Newport. After her career peaked she was married twice to prominent businessmen. First was William C. Langley, a Wall Street broker. After he died, she married Walter Hoving, who had owned Tiffany & Company and Bonwit Teller.

In 1972 she ran as the Republican-Conservative challenger to United States Representative Edward I. Koch in the Silk Stocking district on the East Side of Manhattan.

Pickens also painted. Flowers were her favorite subject, roses in particular. She exhibited in galleries and sold dozens of paintings for charity.

She was 84 years old when she died of heart failure in Newport, Rhode Island, on February 21, 1992. She also had a home on Park Avenue in Manhattan. She was survived by her daughter, Marcella Clark McCormack of Newport and Manhattan, and a sister, Patti Shreve of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

The Jane Pickens Theater, a one-screen arthouse cinema that is one of two remaining movie theaters in Newport, was renamed after her in 1974. Pickens and her sister Patti performed at the dedication ceremony.[11]