Rudy Vallée was born Hubert Prior Vallée 121 years ago today in Island Pond, Vermont. We’ll be featuring his music all day on Cladrite Radio, so tune in now! Heigh-ho, everybody!
Remember Rudy Vallée on His Birthday
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10 Things You Should Know About Rudy Vallée
Here are 10 things you should know about Rudy Vallée, born 120 years ago today. One of the earliest teen idols, he went on to enjoy success as a recording artist, in radio, movies and TV, and on Broadway.
We’re featuring Vallée’s music all day today on Cladrite Radio, so why not tune in now?
Happy 115th Birthday, Rudy Vallée!
Rudy Vallée was born Hubert Prior Vallée 115 years ago today in Island Pond, Vermont. He was a huge star as a young man, a true teen idol singing in a brand new style—the Elvis Presley (or perhaps the Justin Bieber) of his day, if you will. Here are 10 RV Did-You-Knows:
- In addition to his vocal talents, Vallée played drums, clarinet and saxophone.
- Vallée’s popular radio program of the 1920s and early ’30s was sponsored by Fleishmann’s Yeast (funny, but you just don’t see or hear that many yeast advertisements anymore).
- Vallée, for all his popularity with the public, was said to be difficult to work with early in his career. He was short-tempered and ever spoiling for a fight, it is said.
- As an orchestra leader, Vallée gave many popular singers their start, among them Alice Faye and Frances Langford.
- Vallée wrote his first memoir in 1930, when he was all of 29.
- His catch-phrase was, “Heigh-ho, everybody!”
- The crooners of the 1920s and ’30s, of whom Vallée was among the most popular, were singing in a new, more intimate, even sexy style that simply wasn’t possible prior to the rise of the microphone. Rudy’s vocalizing may not strike the average listener today as especially sexy, but at the time, it was. If you don’t believe us, just ask him: He insisted on more than one occasion that “People called me the guy with the cock in his voice.” (No, we don’t really understand that, either.)
- He played the romantic lead in several movies at the height of his popularity, but he later switched to more comedic roles, playing stuffy, pompous and sometimes oddball characters. (He’s very funny in Preston Sturges‘ The Palm Beach Story (1942), for example, but one almost wonders if he’s in on the joke.)
- Vallée had a hit in the 1920s with The Maine Stein Song, the fight song for his alma mater, the University of Maine.
- Vallée died in 1986 while watching the Statue of Liberty Centennial ceremonies on television.
Happy birthday, Rudy Vallée, wherever you may be!
Times Square Tintypes: Rudy Vallee
In this chapter from his 1932 book, Times Square Tintypes, Broadway columnist Sidney Skolsky profiles crooner and bandleader Rudy Vallee.
AMERICA’S SWEETHEART
RUDY VALLEE was born July 28, 1901, in Island Pond, Vt.
His real name is Herbert Prior Vallee. Took the name of Rudy from Rudy Wiedoft, the saxophone player. His idol.Curses like a stoker. Has a temper and when it is aroused he screams like a woman.
His father was a pharmacist and owned a drug store in Westbrook, Maine, until last summer. The father is a French Canadian. His mother is Irish. Has one sister, Kathleen Marie, and one brother, William, who goes to Fordham College and lives with him.
Doesn’t drink much. When he does he takes a rye highball. The taste of Scotch makes him sick.
When the war broke out he ran away from home to enlist in the navy. While in a training school, they learned that he was only fifteen years old. He was put in the hoosegow until his parents called for him. Stills thinks he was a sailor.
His boyhood ambition was to be a letter carrier.
Sleeps in gay-colored pajamas. He snores and grinds his teeth. Occasionally he has a hot-water bag in bed with him to keep his toes warm. Gets semi-nightmares and wanders in his sleep. Several times his brother pulled him back from walking out a window.
Can play only two instruments. The saxophone and the clarinet. He two-fingers the piano a bit. He is left-handed.
As a kid and a student at Yale he was unpopular with the girls. While at college he majored in Spanish. His desire then was to be a wealthy South American business man.
He pinches the lobe of his ear with his finger nails when he is nervous.
Smokes occasionally. It is an English brand of cigarettes. He has posed for pictures smoking a pipe but detests one. Often requests people not to smoke a pipe in his presence.
The kind of a woman who appeals to him the most is one of the Lenore Ulric type of beauty.
Can often be seen in Childs’ or in Thompson’s one-armed lunch place. His favorite dish is buckwheat cakes with plenty of butter.
While playing at the Rendezvous, he sang so low that Gilda Gray told him “to go get a megaphone.” He did. Now plans to use an all glass megaphone so people will be able to see his face when singing.
His blond eyebrows are not very prominent. Therefore for photographs and stage purposes he pencils in arched eyebrows.
Keeps all strings, bags and papers that he finds. His pockets are filled with bits of paper, cigarette crumbs, throat tablets and burnt matches. Buys every patent medicine that appears. He always carries at least three toothbrushes.
Whenever he takes a girl out to eat he tells her what to order.
Lets his clothes flop wherever he takes them off. Never bothers to hang them up. Is economical. Takes stains out of his suits with a home cleaning fluid.
While playing at the Paramount, two schoolgirls, watching him, decided that they had to meet him personally. Posing as interviewers from a high school paper, they were ushered into his dressing room. As a matter of courtesy, he offered his hand in greeting. One of the girls took it and fainted. The other fell back in a chair—exhausted. The house physician was called, and the girl was revived and escorted to the street. But not until the one who clasped Rudy’s hand let it be known that she was never going to wash the hand that touched her hero’s hand.
His great ambition today is to make one million dollars.
When reading he prefers Western stories. Believes the greatest book ever written to be The Guarded Heights, a story of college life at Princeton, by Wadsworth Camp.
Of all the songs he sings his favorite is “Deep Night.”
On May 11, 1928, he married Leonie Cauchois McCoy. The marriage was annulled the August of that year. He gives every girl the “Grey Dawn” test. Keeps them out until dawn, believing that if a girl looks good then she’ll look good any time.
Has two scars on his body. One is from an appendicitis operation. The other is a bit of gravel in his left knee cap. The result of a motor-cycle accident.
The one thing in life he fears is that some day he will be fat and bald.
Fridays with Rudy: Vagabond Dreams Come True, The Final Chapter
In Chapter 22 of his 1930 memoir, Vagabond Dreams Come True, Rudy Vallée closes by musing on the fleeting nature of fame and what matters most to him amidst the clamor of his early fame.
THE IRONY OF FATE
AND NOW they ask me, “What do you think of this admiration? How does it affect you?” How could it affect me otherwise than to give me a feeling of ironic pleasure. After all, I have a sense of humor, and I am tempted at times to burst into hysterical laughter when I reflect that the city in which I was once the most lonesome person in the world, with the same appearance and musical gifts that I now possess, today finds me the target for both admiration and criticism almost as great as that which Rudolph Valentino received.
Right here I must say that I do not seek the publicity I receive. Rather I almost dislike it. Natural publicity, generally true and sound, I enjoy; stunt, sensational and exaggerated publicity I abhor. I employ one press man, and his specific duty is to keep a keen ear close to earth and to try to kill any unfavorable publicity that might be started by those who would drag me down, because it is a fact, all too true, that the bigger one gets, the more one is panned, reviled and hated. But I have enemies, people I have never met, people who do not know me or my work, but who instinctively dislike me and who would hurt me if they could. I know only two well that certain individuals who cannot stand seeing one so young and apparently untalented, attain something, will not rest until they see the end. It is sometimes possible avoid a catastrophe if the warning comes early enough. For that reason this one man tries to present the facts as they are, and to keep me in the minds of people as I would like to be kept. I am not going to attempt to convince anyone that I am this way or that way. The greatest tributes to my ideals are the photographs that I have received from the boys who play with me. They have all found me a stern taskmaster, but one who always works for their interests. I have told them that they will never be discharged, no matter waht they do, and they know they are assured of a life job with me. We have a world tour which we can begin at almost any time and which will carry us at least four or five years at a good salary for everyone. I will not allow my picture work or anything to hurt my relations with the boys who play with me.Their greatest tribute, as I say, is expressed on the photos they have given me, for nearly all of them have ended their inscriptions by calling me the squarest man they have ever known or worked for. I can ask not more than that.
One article said that my main ambition was to make a million dollars. But it is really much simpler than that . . . after having well provided for my mother and father . . . what would really give me great happiness is to possess a beautiful home in the country, not elaborate but homelike, and comfortable. I played for years for very little, and was very happy since I play for the sheer love of playing. The same is true today and is quite apparent to a close observer: My boys and I play because we enjoy our work. We receive unheard of prices because we won a following through long and extremely hard work on the air and no one can begrudge us what we labored so hard to achieve.
People tell me that our success is fragile, and that the slightest indiscreet action on my part would mean the end. But I like to feel that the bond between us and our true radio admirers and the thousands of sick or unhappy people to whom we have given solace and enjoyment can not be so easily broken and that the end will come only when we cease to bring romance, sincerity, beauty and comfort through our music.