Rudy Vallée

Rudy Vallée, c. 1929

After playing drums in his high school band, Vallée played clarinet and saxophone in bands around New England as a teenager. The popularity of the saxophone and an unexpected reply from his idol Wiedoeft prompted him to perfect his technique. He paid Columbia Records to make four “personal records” which he used for audition purposes with a number of bands. From 1924 to 1925, he played with the Savoy Havana Band at the Savoy Hotel in London, where band members discouraged his attempts to become a vocalist.[3] He returned to the United States, briefly attending the University of Maine. While at the University of Maine, he initiated into Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity on December 5, 1921. He transferred to Yale University in 1924, from which he earned a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy in 1927. As a Yale student he led the football band and was the lead saxophonist in the Yale Collegians with Peter Arno, who became a cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine.[4]

After graduation, he formed Rudy Vallée and the Connecticut Yankees, having named himself after saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft.[5] With this band (formed in 1928),[6] which included two violins, two saxophones, a piano, a banjo, and drums, he began singing as a member of a trio and as a soloist. He had a thin, wavering tenor voice and seemed more at home singing sweet ballads than jazz songs. But his singing, saxophone playing, and the innovative arrangements he wrote for his band attracted attention from a rapidly increasing number of listeners, especially from young women.[7] In 1928 he started performing on the radio, first at New York station WABC, leading his Yale Collegians Orchestra,[8] and then on WEAF and the NBC Red Network beginning in February 1929.[9]

Vallée megaphone crafted in between shows at the New York Palace in May 1929

He became one of the first crooners.[7] Singers needed strong voices to fill theaters in the days before microphones. Crooners had soft voices that were suited to the intimacy of radio; the microphones, in this case, promoted direct access to "a vulnerable and sensuous interior," or in other words, "a conjured intimacy".[10] Vallée was one of the first celebrity radio vocalists.[7] Flappers pursued him wherever he went.[7] His live appearances were usually sold out. Contrary to popular belief, he did not have screaming girls at his appearances. However, his voice still failed to project in venues without microphones and amplification, so he often sang through a megaphone, a device he had used when leading the Yale football band. A caricature of him singing this way was depicted in the Betty Boop cartoon Poor Cinderella (1934).[11] Another caricature is in Crosby, Columbo, and Vallee, which parodies him, Bing Crosby, and Russ Columbo.

In the words of a magazine writer in 1929,

At the microphone he is truly a romantic figure. Faultlessly attired in evening dress, he pours softly into the radio's delicate ear a stream of mellifluous melody. He appears to be coaxing, pleading and at the same time adoring the invisible one to whom his song is attuned.[12]

Vallée had his share of detractors as well as fans when his popularity was at its height. Radio Revue, a radio fan magazine, held a contest in which people wrote letters explaining his success. The winning letter, written by a man who disliked Vallée's music, said, "Rudy Vallee is reaping the harvest of a seed that is seldom sown this day and age: LOVE. The good-looking little son-of-a-gun really and honestly LOVES his audience and his art. He LOVES to please listeners—LOVES it more than he does his name in the big lights, his mug in the papers. He loved all those unseen women as passionately as a voice can love, long before they began to purr and to caress him with two-cent stamps."[13]

Vallée made his first commercial recordings in 1928 for Columbia's low-priced labels Harmony, Velvet Tone, and Diva. He signed with RCA Victor in February 1929 and remained with the company through 1931, leaving after a heated dispute with executives over song selections. He then recorded for the short-lived Hit of the Week label which sold rather poor quality records laminated onto a cardboard base. In August 1932, he signed with Columbia and remained with the label through 1933. Vallée returned to RCA Victor in June 1933; his records were initially issued on Victor's low-priced Bluebird label until November 1933, when he was back on the standard Victor label. He remained with RCA Victor until signing with ARC in 1936. ARC issued his records on the Perfect, Melotone, Conqueror and Romeo labels until 1937, when he again returned to RCA Victor.

With his group the Connecticut Yankees, Vallée's best-known recordings include "The Stein Song" (a.k.a. University of Maine school song) in 1929[14] and "Vieni, Vieni" in the latter 1930s.

His last hit record was a reissue of "As Time Goes By", popularized in the 1942 film Casablanca. Due to the 1942-44 AFM recording ban, RCA Victor reissued the version he had recorded in 1931.[15] During World War II, he enlisted in the United States Coast Guard to help direct the 11th district Coast Guard band as a Chief Petty Officer. He was promoted to Lieutenant and led the 40 piece band to great success. In 1944, he was placed on the inactive list and returned to radio.[16]

According to George P. Oslin, Vallée on July 28, 1933, was the recipient of the first singing telegram. A fan telegraphed birthday greetings, and Oslin had the operator sing "Happy Birthday to You".[17][18][19]

Rudy Vallée on The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour in 1933. He always signed on saying, "Heigh-ho, everybody!"

In 1929, Vallée began hosting The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour,[20] a popular radio show with guests such as Fay Wray and Richard Cromwell in dramatic skits. Vallée continued hosting radio shows such as the Royal Gelatin Hour, Vallee Varieties, and The Rudy Vallee Show through the 1930s and 1940s.

Vallée as bandleader Skip Houston in Sweet Music

When Vallée took his contractual vacations from his national radio show in 1937, he insisted his sponsor hire Louis Armstrong as his substitute.[21] This was the first instance of an African-American hosting a national radio program. Vallée wrote the introduction for Armstrong's 1936 book Swing That Music.

In 1929, Vallée made his first feature film, The Vagabond Lover, for RKO Radio. His first films were made to cash in on his singing popularity. While his initial performances were rather wooden, his acting greatly improved in the late 1930s and 1940s, and by the time he began working with Preston Sturges in the 1940s, he had become a successful comedic supporting player. He appeared opposite Claudette Colbert in Sturges's classic 1942 screwball comedy The Palm Beach Story. Other films in which he appeared include I Remember Mama, Unfaithfully Yours and The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.

In 1955, Vallée was featured in Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, co-starring Jane Russell, Alan Young, and Jeanne Crain. The production was filmed on location in Paris. The film was based on the Anita Loos novel that was a sequel to her acclaimed Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Gentlemen Marry Brunettes was popular throughout Europe at the time and was released in France as A Paris Pour les Quatre ("Paris for the Four"), and in Belgium as Tevieren Te Parijs.

Vallée performed on Broadway as J.B. Biggley in the 1961 musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and reprised the role in the 1967 film version.[22] He appeared in the 1960s Batman television series as the villain Lord Marmaduke Ffogg and in 1971 as a vindictive surgeon in the Night Gallery episode "Marmalade Wine".[23]

From 1948 to 1952, Vallée owned Vallee-Video, a television production company formed in the early days of national TV broadcasts. The company was incorporated on April 3, 1948.[24] Vallée made 16mm film shorts for television, including These Foolish Things and Under a Campus Moon, in which he appeared himself. Ed Wynn, Pinky Lee, Buddy Lester and Cyril Smith also appeared in Vallee-Video productions.[25] Comedy sequences in the productions featured dubbed-in laughter.[26]

In 1949, Vallee-Video produced one of the first cartoon shows on television, Tele-Comics.[27]

Vallee-Video's breakthrough in 1952 would have been a 15-minute television show based on the Dick Tracy comic strip starring Vallée's friend Ralph Byrd, who played the character in four successful Dick Tracy theatrical serials from 1937 to 1941. Vallée sold the show as a pilot to NBC. Vallée and Byrd also worked on a proposed radio show based on the comic strip Hawkshaw the Detective.[28] However, Byrd died in August 1952, bringing the Dick Tracy production to a halt, and spelling the end for Vallee-Video.[25]

• 
  In the process of being painted by Rolf Armstrong on November 21, 1929
• 
  Painted by Rolf Armstrong on November 21, 1929
• 
  1929 caricature from Radio Revue
• 
  1930 caricature from Photoplay
• 
  Advertisement for Old Gold Cigarettes with a fabricated biography
• 
  Caricature in the 1932 Merrie Melodies cartoon Crosby, Columbo, and Vallee; note the megaphone and the curl in his hair
• 
  Caricature in the 1934 Betty Boop cartoon Poor Cinderella

• 
  Radio Revue, December 1929
• 
  Radio Guide, April 16–22, 1933
• 
  Radio Stars, May 1933
• 
  Radio Mirror, December 1934
• 
  Radio Stars, May 1936

• Kitty from Kansas City (1931)

• The Royal Desserts Hour with Rudy Vallée (May 5, 1938) (one hour in)
• Recordings on Standard Labels at the Internet Archive
• Recordings on Discount Labels at the Internet Archive
• More recordings (including unreleased personal recordings) at the Internet Archive