BORN ON THIS DAY: JEAN SIMMONS

On this last day of January, legendary actress Jean Simmons was born in 1929. Simmons was born in Lower Holloway, London, to Charles Simmons, a bronze medalist in gymnastics at the 1912 Summer Olympics, and his wife, Winifred (née Loveland) Simmons. Jean was the youngest of four children with siblings Edna, Harold and Lorna. She began acting at the age of 14. During the Second World War, the Simmons family was evacuated to Winscombe, Somerset. Her father, a physical education teacher, taught briefly at Sidcot School, and sometime during this period Simmons followed her elder sister on to the village stage and sang songs such as "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow". Returning to London and just enrolled at the Aida Foster School of Dance, Simmons was spotted by the director Val Guest, who cast her in the Margaret Lockwood vehicle Give Us the Moon.

Small roles in several other films followed including the high profile Caesar and Cleopatra, produced by Gabriel Pascal. Pascal saw potential in Simmons and in 1945 he signed her to a seven-year contract. Prior to moving to Hollywood, she played the young Estella in David Lean's version of Great Expectations (1946) and Ophelia in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), for which she received her first Oscar nomination. She played an Indian girl in the Powell-Pressburger film Black Narcissus (1947).

It was the experience of working on Great Expectations that caused her to pursue an acting career more seriously:

"I thought acting was just a lark, meeting all those exciting movie stars, and getting £5 a day which was lovely because we needed the money. But I figured I'd just go off and get married and have children like my mother. It was working with David Lean that convinced me to go on."

Playing Ophelia to Olivier's Hamlet made her a star while still in her teens, although she was already well known for her work in other British films, including her first starring role in the film adaptation of Uncle Silas, and Black Narcissus (both 1947). Olivier offered her the chance to work and study at the Bristol Old Vic, advising her to play anything they threw at her to get experience; she was under contract to the Rank Organisation who vetoed the idea. In 1949 Simmons starred with Stewart Granger in Adam and Evelyne. In 1950 she was voted the fourth most popular star in Britain. In 1951 Rank sold her contract to Howard Hughes, who then owned the RKO Pictures.

In 1953 she starred alongside Spencer Tracy in The Actress, a film that was one of her personal favourites. Among the many films she appeared in during this period were The Robe (1953), Young Bess (1953), Désirée (1954), The Egyptian (1954), Guys and Dolls (1955), The Big Country (1958), Elmer Gantry (1960), (directed by her second husband, Richard Brooks), Spartacus (1960), All the Way Home (1963) and The Happy Ending (1969), for which she received her second Oscar nomination. In the opinion of film critic Philip French, Home Before Dark (1958) saw her give '"perhaps her finest performance as a housewife driven into a breakdown in Mervyn LeRoy's psychodrama".

By the 1970s Simmons turned her focus to stage and television acting. She toured the United States in Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, then took the show to London, and thus originated the role of Desirée Armfeldt in the West End. Performing in the show for three years, she said she never tired of Sondheim's music; "No matter how tired or off you felt, the music would just pick you up."

She made a late career appearance in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Drumhead" as a retired Starfleet admiral and hardened legal investigator who conducts a witch-hunt. In 1991 she appeared in the short-lived revival of the 1960s daytime series Dark Shadows, in roles originally played by Joan Bennett. From 1994 until 1998 Simmons narrated the A&E documentary television series, Mysteries of the Bible. In 2004 Simmons voiced the lead-role of Sophie in the English dub of Howl's Moving Castle.

Jean died in 2010 of lung cancer, days before her 81st birthday...

CHRISTINE CHUBBUCK: THE SAGA CONTINUES

"In keeping with Channel 40's policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts and in living color, you are going to see another first," 29-year-old broadcast journalist Christine Chubbuck told her television audience during her final on-air broadcast on Monday, July 15, 1974. "Attempted suicide."

The morning host of Sun Coast Digest on WXLT in Sarasota, Florida, then pulled a .38 caliber revolver from under her desk and shot herself in the head. She died 15 hours later and became the first on-air suicide in the United States.

"My grandparents lived across the street from my sister and she was extremely close to both of them," Chubbuck's brother Greg tells PEOPLE. "They watched every one of her shows, except my grandfather had an appointment with his doctor and he didn't feel like driving so my grandmother drove him and they missed the only show they had ever missed my sister on – the show she killed herself. She knew they weren't going to be watching that show."

Chubbuck's death made headlines around the country and helped inspire the 1976 film Network starring Faye Dunaway and Peter Finch.

Now, 40-years later, Chubbuck's tragic tale is the driving force behind two films selected to debut at the Sundance Film Festival, underway in Park City, Utah.

Christine, directed by Antonio Campos and starring British actress Rebecca Hall, chronicles the newswoman's final days. The second film, Kate Plays Christine, is a documentary by director Robert Greene that follows House of Cards actress Kate Lyn Sheil as she gets ready to play the role of the statuesque 5-foot, 11-inch brunette in a forthcoming movie.

Chubbuck's brother Greg says he doesn't plan to watch either film. "Nobody wants to know who Christine Chubbuck was," he says. "They want to sensationalize what happened at the end of her life. A public suicide is not a source of joy for a family."

Christine Chubbuck grew up in the upscale Ohio suburb of Harbor with her parents, George and Peg, and two brothers, older brother Tim and younger brother Greg. The only daughter of a high-end automotive and manufacturing industry salesperson and a housewife, Christine was talented and smart. While in middle school, she was a flutist in the high school marching band. She later developed an interest in acting at private school and enrolled in the University of North Carolina summer acting program.

Christine was a bright, gifted student with a sharp wit and a nationally ranked kayaker, but since she was about 10 she never felt that she fit in.

Greg recalls his older brother, Tim, taking him aside and telling him their time with "Chrissie" would be short-lived. 

"We have to hug Chrissie extra hard because we aren't going to have her very long," Greg recalls. "He was 12 and I was 8 and in the back of our minds we always knew that our time with her was not going to be infinite."

Greg says his parents spent over $1 million over 20 years with psychiatrists and psychologists to "help Chrissie find peace."

Greg now believes his sister suffered from bipolar disorder, a mood disorder defined by periods of highs and periods of depression. At the time, Greg says she was only being treated for depression.

"If you are treating someone for general depression and they have bipolar depression they actually get worse," he says. "So with that in mind, you can imagine my parents' 20-year odyssey to try and help my sister understand why she didn't look at the world the way everybody else did, while very expensive did not turn out to be fruitful. That never made my parents give up on my sister or quit loving her. Her two brothers adored her. My wife at the time and my little girl just worshipped my sister and none of that made any of the outcomes change."

Christine's emotional wellbeing was further tested at 16 when her 23-year-old boyfriend was killed in a car accident. 

"I think truly that this fellow, Dave the kayaker, he was truly the love of her life," says Greg.

Nonetheless, Christine went on to earn a degree in broadcasting at Boston University, worked at a Florida cable station, attended a summer film workshop at NYU, and then got a job at public television stations in Pittsburgh and Canton, Ohio. The 21-year-old began dating a man in his early 30s, but Greg says their father disapproved of his age and his religion – he was Jewish – and the relationship was short lived.

"She never really had another boyfriend after that," Greg said.

Christine moved to Florida to live with her mother after her parents divorced. She worked as a hospital computer operator before landing a job as a reporter, then host at WXLT in Sarasota, Florida.

"It was her show," says Greg. "It was one person doing all of it with very low pay."

Everyone in the family went out of their way to help Christine with her television career. Her mother paid for designer dresses to make sure she looked good on air.

"In 1974 there weren't too many local TV personalities wearing $2,000 designer dresses, and she did," says Greg. 

Despite having her own morning television show, Greg says his sister never felt she was good enough – and was constantly doubting herself.

"She was very gifted and she never felt like she was good enough and she was constantly doubting herself, and I mean morosely doubting herself," says Greg. "And she would come out of it and she would be better and we would think with all the outside help with the professionals maybe this would be the time she would get her wind and be fine. But it just never really happened completely for her. It is a really sad, tragic circumstance."

The final Monday show started off normally. Then, Christine introduced a segment about an officer-involved shooting. The news footage jammed and that was when Christine – looking relaxed and determined – said the words that would make headline news, drew a revolver, pointed it at her head and shot herself behind her right ear.

A few weeks before her suicide, Christine interviewed a deputy sheriff about suicide.

"She asked him if someone were to kill themselves where they would put the gun to make sure it was effective," Greg recalls. "I learned this from the deputy sheriff. He was in tears."

Christine's family immediately got an injunction preventing the release of the tape of her suicide. After it was seized as evidence by authorities, it was turned over to their mother, Peg.

"I don't know to this day where it is," Greg says. "But I know no one knows where it is and no one ever will if I have anything to say about it."

SOURCE

RIP: ABE VIGODA

Abe Vigoda, the beloved actor known for playing Det. Fish on Barney Miller and mobster Sal Tessio in The Godfather, and for weathering years of mistaken reports about his death, died in his sleep in New Jersey on Tuesday, January 26, at the age of 94.

Audiences first got to know the actor in 1972’s The Godfather, when the then 51-year-old actor played Tessio, a longtime friend and associate of the Corleone family who’s killed when the Corleones find out he’s been working with a rival mob family.

In 1975, Vigoda began playing Det. Phil Fish on the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning ABC sitcom Barney Miller. Fish was a cantankerous New York City detective whose advancing age had led to a lot of physical ailments, namely a persistent hemorrhoids issue that fed his grumpiness and made the squad’s bathroom one of his frequent hangouts.

The role earned Vigoda three Emmy nominations, and led to a spin-off, Fish, in which an eventually-retired Fish and his wife Bernice (Florence Stanley) raised a group of foster children (including one played by a pre-Diff’rent Strokes Todd Bridges). The series ran for two seasons on ABC.

The star, born in Brooklyn on Feb. 24, 1921 to parents who immigrated from Russia, began his acting career in 1947, and appeared in several Broadway productions before his breakout role in The Godfather.

He also guest-starred on TV shows like Dark Shadows, Kojak, and Hawaii Five-0, and, post-Barney Miller and Fish, had memorable roles in Cannonball Run, Look Who’s Talking, Joe Versus the Volcano, and Good Burger.

Vigoda, who always looked a bit older than his actual age, also played along with what became a running joke: premature reports of his death. In 1982, People magazine mistakenly printed a story that referred to him as “the late” Abe Vigoda, which prompted him to pose, sitting up, in a coffin, holding a copy of People, for a photo that ran inVariety to prove he was very much alive.

Various TV reports, late-night TV hosts David Letterman and Conan O’Brien, and numerous Websites either mistakenly reported his death or poked fun at the idea that he was frequently the subject of such rumors. A pair of Websites — Abe Vigoda Status and Is Abe Vigoda Dead? — exist solely to keep tabs on whether or not he’s still alive, and Vigoda won a whole new fanbase for his good humor and longevity as faux reports of his death became a meme...

RECENTLY VIEWED: A BOY NAMED CHARLIE BROWN

The other night I had the opportunity to re watch one of the saddest movies I have watched in some time, and one movie that has stuck with me through the years. The movie is the 1969 cartoon A Boy Named Charlie Brown. The movie has been important to me, because in my youth I felt like I was a misfit like the main character poor Charlie Brown.

The movie was the first feature film based on the Peanuts comic strip. It was also the final time that Peter Robbins voiced the character of Charlie Brown (Robbins had voiced the role for all the Peanuts television specials up to that point, starting with the debut of the specials, 1965's A Charlie Brown Christmas).

In this film, Charlie Brown, our hero, has finally proved that he can do something right. He wins the spelling bee in his class. All the kids treat him with their usual lack of tact. He studies really hard and wins the championship at his school and gets to go to the "city" to be in the "National Elimination Spelling Bee" I will not spoil the ending.

Vince Guaraldi, the composer of the music for the six previous TV specials, is back for this one. There are new arrangements of the old music, plus several new songs by Rod McKuen. Guaraldi did not do the music for the next feature, Snoopy Come Home (1972) and that film suffers because of this.

Schroeder has a beautiful salute to Beethoven in this film. While the music plays, we see some beautiful abstract scenes and colors on the screen that look fantastic in Technicolor. Sadly, I have seen this sequence cut from TV showings.

Snoopy has a wonderful sequence while he and Linus are wandering around the city looking for his blanket that he sent with Charlie Brown for good luck. Snoopy discovers an ice skating rink and pretends that he is in a hockey match while he skates around the rink. He also has an encounter with the Red Baron that has some of the same animation that was used in "He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown! on TV.

One thing that I like about this film is when the closing credits are rolling, you get to see animated images of most of the principal creators of this film. Their names are on the right side of the screen, and their images appear on the left. Things like that entice me to sit through the credits instead of walking out as soon as they start.

Since I watched the movie, I can not get the title song "A Boy Named Charlie Brown", sung and written by Rod McKuen out of my head. It sets the whole mood for the film in the beginning and the end. The song and the movie basically tells us that there is a little bit of Charlie Brown in all of us. I love the movie despite its melancholy portrayal of Charlie Brown, and even though I am sad for Charlie, I am quite happy by the end of the film. It is a great film for everyone. You're a blockhead if you don't see this one!

MY RATING: 10 OUT OF 10

MUSIC BREAK: LOUIS ARMSTRONG - SO LONG DEARIE

JOHN SCOTT TROTTER: A MUSICAL HEAVYWEIGHT

Bing's musical director during his hey-day was an easy-going mountain of a man, John Scott Trotter. Trotter weighed in at 12 pounds when he was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1908. As an adult he weighed nearly 300 pounds. Trotter's professional music career began at the University of North Carolina in 1925 when he became pianist and arranger for a college band led by Hal Kemp.

Trotter's chance for national fame came 12 years later in 1937. Bing was hosting the Kraft Music Hall with Jimmy Dorsey conducting the orchestra. Kraft insisted that the show include a concert spot of classical music, and Dorsey was having difficulty delivering an acceptable product. He gracefully left the show. In searching for a new musical director, Crosby asked his songwriter friend, Johnny Burke, about the arranger for singer Skinnay Ennis of the Hal Kemp Orchestra. Burke told him "John Scott Trotter." Crosby said "Get him."

Trotter was tracked down in New York and offered the job as Crosby's orchestra leader. Trotter accepted, and took over for Dorsey on the 8 July 1937 broadcast. Soon he was arranging and conducting for Crosby's Decca recordings as well. Their first Decca session was the up-tempo It's the Natural Thing to Do, recorded July 12, 1937.

Carroll Carroll, chief writer on the Kraft show, recalled Trotter's massive volume and appetite:

"Trotter, a monolith of a man, stood astride pop and 'long hair' music, as it was then called, like a colossus, and occasionally flew from Hollywood to New Orleans for the weekend (something not done often in the thirties) just to cater to his gourmet tastes with a decent plate of oysters Rockefeller. During the war, when home economist M.F.K. Fisher was a guest on the show to plug her wartime conservation cookbook, How to Cook a Wolf, she told Bing that her book explained how to use leftovers. The heartily-fed Trotter stepped to the mike and, in his most polite and gentle North Carolina drawl, asked, 'Pardon me, ma'am, but what are left-overs?'" (from The Old Time Radio Book by Ted Sennett, p70)
                      

Trotter arranged and conducted for Crosby for 17 years. During that time several members of his orchestra went on to greater fame. Jerry Colonna (1905-86) was Trotter's trombonist when his comedic skills were discovered. While playfully singing "On the Road to Mandalay" with Trotter at the organ, Colonna began on a high note reminiscent of an air raid siren and went up from there. The next week he was featured as the guest 'concert star' on the Kraft show. Soon Colonna joined Bob Hope's radio show as his comedy side-kick.

Trotter hired Spike Jones (1911-65) in 1937 to beat the drums in his orchestra. Jones became a celebrity during World War II when he moonlighted on a novelty song called "Der Fuhrer's Face." The song became such a hit that Jones left the Trotter orchestra late in 1942 to make a career for himself as conductor of a not-so-serious band, the City Slickers. Jones' raucous sound was invented by Trotter's orchestra to accompany (and cover) the dischordant notes of comedian Bob Burns on the bazooka. Later Jones and his City Slickers returned as guests on the Crosby show. After the City Slickers accompanied Bing on a song, Crosby was heard to say, "John Scott, don't ever leave me!"

Trotter remained as Crosby's musical director until 1954. Their last recording together was "In the Good Old Summertime" in May. That summer Bing decided to end his big-budget radio variety show and with it went his need for a full-time musical director. Bing wrote Trotter on Sept. 9: "I certainly hate to see the wonderful organization we have break up, and it gives me a wrench to be an instrument in its dissolution. I shall never forget all the good years you and I had together, and all the wonderful unselfish things you did for me and my interests. You had a great deal to put up with at times, and your patience and forbearance was always incredible. You must know how grateful I am to you for everything that you have done."

Trotter moved on to television, becoming musical director for the George Gobel show from 1954-60. He remained friends with Bing and was a frequent visitor to Bing's home, even helping redecorate Bing's San Francisco mansion. Trotter served as musical director of several of Bing's TV specials as well as his 1964-65 ABC situation comedy, The Bing Crosby Show. Later he directed the music for the Charlie Brown cartoon specials. In 1970 Trotter was nominated for an Oscar and a Grammy for his musical score for the movie "A Boy Named Charlie Brown."

Bing once said of Trotter, "I'm not musically educated enough to really describe what he was in music terms. I just knew he was very good and he had marvellous taste."

Trotter died of cancer October 30, 1975, a month after arranging a Boston Pops special for PBS...

RIP: ALAN RICKMAN

This has been a tough year so far on deaths. We lost another great talent with the death of Alan Rickman.  British actor Alan Rickman has died at age 69; he had reportedly been suffering from cancer.

British actor Alan Rickman, a veteran of dozens of films, has died at age 69. Recently, Rickman was most well-known for portraying the complicated villain Severus Snape in the films based on J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books.

Rickman appeared in an array of blockbuster films during his prolific career, from 1988's Die Hard with Bruce Willis to 2003's Love Actually and the Harry Potter films.

Blessed with a rich and deep voice, the actor brought intelligence and humanity to a wide spectrum of roles, judiciously deploying what seemed to be a bottomless supply of frowns and smirks that endeared him to his fans.

While his voice became something of a trademark, Rickman once said that he endured much criticism for it in drama school. One voice teacher, as he recalled in 2007, told Rickman that he sounded as if his voice was "coming out of the back end of a drain pipe."

Explaining his own opinion of his voice, Rickman said, "Well, it's what I'm stuck with, so it's not like I can go and get another one. And also, I don't hear what anybody else hears. So it's always a bit of a shock, you know. And it never goes away."

While he might be famous for playing villains, Rickman once told NPR that those roles are "a very small part of whatever I've done. It's like two or three parts, and they just happened to have big publicity budgets."

Rickman also directed films and theatrical works, and he acted in plays from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra to Noel Coward's Private Lives.

Three films from the 1990s help describe Rickman's range.

In 1991, he turned in a memorable performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves — a film whose legacy these days isn't helped by Kevin Costner's hair, but which was the second-most popular film in theaters that year.

In 1995, he appeared in the director Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, playing Colonel Brandon opposite Kate Winslet's Marianne Dashwood.

And in 1999, he showed his willingness to camp it up onscreen, when he starred with Sigourney Weaver and Tim Allen in Galaxy Quest, a film that might best be described as a sci-fi romp. My personal favorite movie that starred the gifted actor was 2007's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street...

MUSIC BREAK: BUDDY CLARK - ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON

KING KONG REVISITED

I was born over 40 years after the classic RKO movie King Kong came out, and as a young boy growing up, it scared me as if I was seeing a brand new film on the screen. If you ask any film maker today they will all concur that King Kong was light years ahead of other movies, especially for 1933. The film is as fresh today as it was in 1933, but I do not think it could have been made today. Sure the big budget sequel that director Peter Jackson made in 2005 was great, but the original movie did not have the lavish budget and special effects technology that the remade had. What it did have was black & white, which really gave the movie and eerie look to it with the use of shadows. It also had one of the best actresses ever to grace the silver screen – Fay Wray. Without Wray, King Kong would merely be an angry monkey.

The story is also legendary. The story of King Kong parallels that of Beauty and the Beast where a gruff, monstrous entity risks his life for the woman he loves. Of course, in the 1976 version and the 2005 version, the relationship between Anne Darrow and Kong is much more drawn out, but in the 1933 version, Kong's just a normal ape who falls in love with a girl who was originally supposed to be sacrificed to him. Anne Darrow, portrayed by Fay Wray comes off as a screaming bimbo who doesn't really do anything to make Kong like her. Every time he comes around and picks her up, all she does is scream bloody murder. It's no wonder why some considered Wray a "scream queen". But then again, she is a pretty individual and we don't want to see her in any kind of peril. She's just your typical damsel in distress, something drastically changed about her character in later adaptations. The other characters are fine too, and Anne's love interest is a likely goofball who doesn't seem to admire her at first but comes to admire her as the film unfolds.
                                       

Kong is just an incredibly sight. Every time I see him, a get a good snicker out of him. He's just a normal, wild ape who acts out of instinct and at times doesn't know what to do with himself. But the scene where he's strapped down for all the citizens of New York to see and he gives off that cheesy grin, I just get a funny feeling inside. Maybe Kong is more human than we originally thought. He's willing to do anything to protect Anne and when he climbs the Empire State Building, he's attempting to fight off the planes solely to protect her from any harm. It goes to show that any animal, even animals of extreme height and weigh have emotions and in their own ways, motivations. This of course was elaborated on in the various remakes, but I think the original gets the point across more. Kong may seem like a threat to the citizens of New York, but deep down, he's just a creature with love in his heart and a determination to protect the one he loves, even if the humans don't see it. Why else would he break the jaw of the T-Rex. Why else would he take down a bloodthirsty pterodactyl. All these elements make his death at the end much more compelling.

From the start of the picture, its clever screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose (based on a story by Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace) suggested the coming terror. The film was shot during the spring and summer of 1932 in the confines of the studio. Due to their limited budget for sets, Cooper and Schoedsack used the jungle locale from the latter's previous film The Most Dangerous Game (1932) - an adventure film that also starred Fay Wray. When released, it broke all previous box-office records. Its massive, money-making success helped to save RKO Studios from bankruptcy.

Even though King Kong is one of my favorite movies of the 1930s, the movie is not perfect. There are some errors if one looks closely enough. In close-ups of his face, King Kong has more teeth than he does when his whole body is shown. The apparent size of Kong changes from 18 feet to 24 feet. This was a conscious decision of director Merian C. Cooper, who felt that Kong's size wasn't impressive enough in New York. The publicity materials would later state Kong's height was 60 feet, almost 3 times the average height as he is actually depicted in the film. In the wide shot of Kong climbing the Empire State Building, he is climbing the western face of the structure. The financial district is visible to the south in the background. The shot of him atop the tower shows the Chrysler Building directly behind him. That building being to the ESB's north east, that puts Kong on the southern face of the building. When he falls, in the closer shot, he falls back to the south east. Back in the wide shot, he falls off the western side.

The list could go on and on of errors, but what this movie manages to do – flaws and all was to captivate audiences in 1933 which were weary from the horrors of the Great Depression. In a weird way it made them forget their own problems and think it could be worse, they could be chased by a giant ape. To audiences in 2015, it continues to amaze and scare and entertain. The film makes probably had no idea some 80 years later people would still be writing and talking about this amazing film of the 1930s...

RIP: KITTY KALLEN

Kitty Kallen, her voice sweet and clear, welcomed the troops home from World War II, singing: “Kiss me once, then kiss me twice, then kiss me once again. It’s been a long, long time.” She turned out hits like “Bésame Mucho,” “I’m Beginning to See the Light,” “In the Chapel in the Moonlight” and “Little Things Mean a Lot” — many reaching the Top 10.

And after singing with many of her era’s top bandleaders — Artie Shaw, Harry James, Jimmy Dorsey, Jack Teagarden — she outlasted their era. Her last hit, “My Coloring Book,” was in 1962.

Ms. Kallen died on Thursday at her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico. She was 94. Her son, Jonathan Granoff, who confirmed her death, said she had been living year-round in Mexico, where she had long had a vacation home while spending most of her adult life in Englewood, N.J.

Ms. Kallen arrived on the scene as a teenager in the late 1930s. She fit the classic image of that musical era: a gorgeous girl with a big smile, a perfect figure in a strapless gown, a string of pearls, a flower in her hair, swaying to the sound of a muted horn.

Sweet but not too sweet, her voice conveyed romance without irony at a time when there was still mystery between the sexes and no embarrassment in being moved by a song about lovers’ dreams or the magic of a kiss.

She had no formal training in music, but her pitch was flawless, her phrasing disciplined and her diction crisp in a natural, unforced way. Every word she sang was clear.

Though she was born and raised in Philadelphia, Ms. Kallen, unlike her siblings, had no local accent in her singing or her speaking, Mr. Granoff said, adding, “How she did that I have no idea.”

She was born Katie Kallen on May 25, 1921, in South Philadelphia to Sam Kallen, a barber, and the former Fanny Kaplan. The family name was misspelled Kellam on her birth certificate, her son said. Her mother died when she was 8, and her father remarried. She had three brothers, two sisters and a stepbrother from her stepmother’s previous marriage.

Ms. Kallen began singing as a child on “The Children’s Hour,” a radio show sponsored by Horn & Hardart, which owned the Automat restaurants in New York and Philadelphia. She soon had her own radio show in Philadelphia, and by age 15 she was singing with big bands — “bringing home the bacon for her family,” her son said.

Her first marriage, to Clint Garvin, a clarinetist in Teagarden’s band, was annulled. In 1947, at the Copacabana in New York, Frank Sinatra’s first wife, Nancy, introduced Ms. Kallen to Budd Granoff, a press agent who represented Sinatra, Jimmy Durante, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Doris Day and many other entertainers. Mr. Granoff was instantly smitten and told a companion that he had just met the girl he would marry.

They did marry, in 1948, and Mr. Granoff soon gave up his other clients to manage Ms. Kallen’s career full time. The couple and Jonathan, their only child, lived most of the time in Englewood, except for a few years in the Los Angeles area, when Mr. Granoff worked in television. Jonathan Granoff said he was 12 or so before he realized that not everyone’s mother sang on “The Ed Sullivan Show” or had strange, loud, funny friends like Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks and Zero Mostel.

In 1955, Ms. Kallen’s throat began to seize up, and she could not sing before a live audience. But she could still record, which convinced her that the problem was psychological, not physical. She went on to spend five “lost” years “in the clutches of psychoanalysts,” she told The American Weekly in 1960. One therapist urged divorce (she refused) and dragged her back through painful childhood memories of her mother’s death and of being called homely and nicknamed Monkey.

Another therapist, she said, thought everything was based on sex and had an office full of “strange contraptions.” Expected to undress for psychotherapy sessions, she quit. Yet another talked mostly about himself but also counseled divorce, she said. A fourth hypnotized her.

Finally, in 1959, she began to recover — no thanks, she said, to her therapists. The turning point came when her son, then 11, found her weeping over her mother-in-law’s death and tried to comfort her by saying that everything was in God’s hands. It was what she needed to hear, she said. Those words inspired a new degree of religious faith and enabled her to return to work. She retired in the mid-1960s.

At some point after retirement, her son said, several women in different parts of the country tried to pass themselves off as Kitty Kallen, showing up to sing at retirement homes and other places. His father, he said, would call them and say: “Stop it. You’re crazy,” but they were incorrigible.

In 1978, Ms. Kallen and her family were startled to hear reports of her death. One of her impersonators had checked into a hospital in a Los Angeles suburb and died there. The hospital announced Kitty Kallen’s death, and the news spread.

Frank Sinatra called to offer his condolences, Mr. Granoff recalled. His father said: “She’s here. She’s just sleeping.” But Sinatra would not desist until his father finally put Ms. Kallen on the phone.

Budd Granoff died in 1996. Besides her son, now president of the Global Security Institute, Ms. Kallen is survived by her companion, Sonny Shiell, and three grandsons.

CELEBRITY ADS: JUDY GARLAND

This advertisement is new to me. I never knew that Judy Garland advertised for make-up giant Max Factor. This magazine advertisement Garland did in connection to her newest musical The Harvey Girls which was premiering in 1946...

RIP: NATALIE COLE

Natalie Cole, the American singer who overcame battles with substance abuse and the long shadow of her famous father to earn worldwide success of her own, has died. She was 65.

Cole died Thursday night at Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles "due to complications from ongoing health issues," according to a statement from her family.

"It is with heavy hearts that we bring to you all the news of our Mother and sister's passing. Natalie fought a fierce, courageous battle, dying how she lived ... with dignity, strength and honor," her sisters, Timolin and Casey Cole, and son, Robert Yancy, said in the statement. "Our beloved Mother and sister will be greatly missed and remain unforgettable in our hearts forever."

The daughter of Nat "King" Cole built a chart-topping career with hits such as "This Will Be," "Inseparable" and "Our Love." She fought health problems for years and received a kidney transplant in 2009 after developing hepatitis, which she blamed on past intravenous drug use.

Cole won nine Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year in 1992 for "Unforgettable ... With Love," a virtual duet made with the recordings of her late father.

"We've lost a wonderful, highly cherished artist and our heartfelt condolences go out to Natalie's family, friends, her many collaborators, as well as to all who have been entertained by her exceptional talent," said Neil Portnow, President and CEO of The Recording Academy.

Nat "King" Cole died of lung cancer in 1965 at age 45. Natalie was 15 at the time of her father's death. He was already a star in the music industry, and rose to even greater heights in the 1950s and 1960s, when Natalie was born to the R&B legend and Maria Ellington Cole, a onetime vocalist, who died in 2012 at the age of 89.

Inspired by her father's musical gift, Cole began her own career as an R&B singer but later gravitated toward smooth pop and jazz genres.

Her first album, 1975's "Inseparable," won two Grammys — one for best new artist and one for best female R&B vocal performance for the hit "This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)."

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