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Betty Grable, 1916-1973 Thrust into show business at the age of 13 by a relentless stage mother, Betty Grable became America's favorite pin-up girl and at one time the highest paid entertainer in the U.S.A. Known for her "million dollar legs", insured by 20th Century Fox, Betty Grable succumbed to lung cancer on July 2nd, 1973 at the age of 56. Born Ruth Elizabeth Grable in St. Louis, Missouri on December 18th, 1916, "Betty" Grable was the youngest of three children born to stockbroker John Conn Grable and his star-struck wife Lillian. After losing her son John as an infant, Lillian Grable became obsessed with living out her own dreams of stardom through her daughters Marjorie and "Betty". When Marjorie, 7 years the senior, proved an unfit candidate, Lillian Grable focused the full fire of her mania on her younger daughter, placing Betty in dance classes by the age of 3. By the time Betty Grable entered elementary school, she was being taught to sing, deliver jokes, and play the ukelele and saxophone as well as perform tap dancing and ballet. A pretty, precocious and eager to please child, Betty Grable threw herself into her mother's training with verve. After a family vacation to California resulted in Lillian's announcement that she was returning to Los Angeles to launch Betty's film career despite her husband's protests, Betty Grable found herself enrolled in the Hollywood Professional High School and Ernest Blecher Academy of Dance at the age of 12. Shortly after she had turned 13 years old, Betty Grable's mother forged work papers that gave her daughter's age as 15- the legal statute for performing chorus work at the time. Pretty, leggy and well made up by her mother, Miss Grable landed a debut in the chorus of the movie musical "Let's Go Places", her youth further concealed by her featured number being in "black face". Lillian fought for a chorus contract with 20th Century Fox for Betty and got it, along with a role in the 1930 Fox Movietone Follies, but after filming began Lillian's forged working papers fell through and Miss Grable was fired before Fox could violate the labor laws. Undaunted, the Grables tried their luck at MGM where Samuel Goldwyn agreed to put Betty in the Eddie Cantor film "Whoopee!", a musical featuring Busby Berkeley dance numbers and a 13-year-old Betty Grable singing the solo bars of the film's opening number. Betty Grable's career was off to an early start, full of bit parts and chorus roles that teamed her with a new friend and fellow starlet, a blonde chorus girl from New York named Lucille Ball. Like Lucille Ball, Betty Grable spent years stuck in bit parts and as "stage decoration" through the early 1930s, working under the out-of-contract alias "Frances Dean" in industrial films and shorts to make extra money. By 1933 Miss Grable had packed off for San Francisco and joined the house orchestra of the Mark Hopkins Hotel, where her wages as a big band singer helped support herself, her mother and older sister. It took more than 10 years and some 20 film appearances before Miss Grable, dubbed "Betty Co-Ed" for her frequent campus-comedy roles, landed a breakthrough part. Along with a second-hand publicity boost that came from her marriage to former child star Jackie Coogan, Miss Grable landed a featured part in the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers film "Gay Divorcee", her performance earning her a contract with RKO Pictures. Work at RKO reunited her with Lucille Ball in such musical comedies as "Old Man Rhythm". Stalled in minor roles, Miss Grable moved on to Paramount Pictures where she picked up supporting roles with Dorothy Lamour. Lamour proved a sterling friend as well as costar in 1939 when Miss Grable collapsed on the set of her first starring role, "Man About Town" with acute appendicitis. While Lamour was moved into the lead on the film, she assured that Miss Grable be allowed to return as a featured dancer as soon as she recovered. Paramount enterprised on the press corps fascination with Jackie Coogan and his starlet wife, pairing them in projects that included "Million Dollar Legs" (the film was titled after a racehorse, but ironically became Miss Grable's own moniker years later). The Coogan-Grable union was crumbling by the time the film was released, Jackie Coogan having spent years in a highly publicized battle to recover his share of profits from his childhood films. Obsessed with his fight, Coogan spent his own income and most of his wife's on the legal war as well as his own high-flying lifestyle, but accepted a heavily reduced settlement. After seeing her husband spend his entire settlement on a high tech car wash venture that failed, 23-year-old Betty Grable filed for divorce. After becoming a free agent personally as well as professionally, Betty Grable was hired by 20th Century Fox, 10 years after her first contract was nullified over her age. Studio head Daryl F. Zanuck had no immediate plans for Miss Grable, but was developing projects when he released her to work in the Broadway musical "DuBerry Was a Lady", a Cole Porter show that teamed Miss Grable with legendary songstress Ethel Merman. Broadway gave Betty Grable a hit- and the cover of "Life" magazine. After more than 10 years of hard work, Betty Grable was an "overnight success". Zanuck rushed her back to Hollywood to star with Fox leading man Don Ameche in the film "Down Argentine Way", a top-grossing hit that reintroduced Miss Grable to American audiences and marked the film debut of Carmen Miranda. Fox put their new star to work on overlapping shoots- "Tin Pan Alley" and then "Moon over Miami". Newly divorced, Miss Grable had an on and off screen romance with Hollywood "Hunk" Victor Mature, with whom she made 4 films, including the hit "Song of the Islands" (1942). As the profit powerhouse at Fox, Betty Grable's co-stars included the cream of the Leading Man crop: in addition to Victor Mature she worked with such heartthrobs as Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. , Dan Dailey (notably "Mother Wore Tights") and George Montgomery, with whom she scored a hit in "Coney Island". "Coney Island" proved such a profitable film for Fox, it was later remade (Starring Miss Grable and Victor Mature) as "Wabash Avenue". Shortly after a slew of USO shows, War Bond tours, and finishing "Sweet Rosie O'Grady", Betty Grable paired up with a different leading man, Big Band Leader Harry James, who she eloped with on July 5th, 1943 in Las Vegas. While the Jameses hoped to avoid the media blitz that had ensued after Fox had insured Grable's famous legs with Lloyd's of London for $1 million, their honeymoon was short lived. Betty Grable returned to Hollywood the next day to begin work on the film "Pin Up Girl". Betty Grable was, in fact the pin up girl of World War II, her famous image painted by American GIs on the noses of bombers and the term "Betty" becoming war-era slang for a good looking woman. After her Vegas wedding, Miss Grable was rushed through the filming of "Pin Up Girl" and slews of publicity photo sessions before it became obvious that she and Harry James were expecting their first child, a daughter, Victoria, who was born March 3rd, 1944. Motherhood little damaged Betty Grable's popularity- or her famed figure- though after she returned to work, Zanuck wanted to put her in war-time thrillers to compete with the popular films coming from Warner Brothers. To her credit, Betty Grable knew her limits, and previous attempts at serious drama had proved personally and professionally disappointing for her, and she refused to star in "The Razor's Edge", earning the first of three studio suspensions. Audiences, as she knew, demanded her in tights and Technicolor, not Film Noir, and they got it. By the arrival of her second daughter in 1947, the US Treasury confirmed that Betty Grable was not only the highest paid woman in the nation- but the hands down highest paid entertainer in the world, with her annual salary of $300,000. Betty Grable continued to turn out films with Fox until 1953, when, following "How To Marry A Millionaire" with Lauren Bacall and her assumed successor, Marilyn Monroe, she wearied of her more and more frequent fights with Zanuck and tore up her contract. After making two more films as a free agent, Betty Grable retired from film, choosing to work on stage. After starring in the tour of "Guys and Dolls" and several other stage musicals, Miss Grable ended her marriage to Harry James in 1965. She became one of the most successful stars of the long-running Broadway production of "Hello, Dolly!" succeeding actress Carol Channing. Though she did not choose to work often in television, her guest starring role on "The Lucy and Desi Comedy Hour" with her long time friend Lucille Ball proved her a talented small-screen actress, and defused some of the rumors that she had been one of Desi Arnaz's extramarital conquests. Miss Grable continued to star on stage until 1972, when she agreed to serve as a presenter at the Academy Award ceremonies of that year. During the awards show, Miss Grable fell ill and was rushed to an area hospital, where she was discovered to be in the advanced stages of lung cancer. After what was thought to have been a successful treatment for her cancer, Betty Grable returned to the stage in "Born Yesterday", but relapsed. Subsequent surgeries and treatment proved unsuccessful, and on July 2nd, 1973 at the age of 56, Betty Grable died at St. John's Hospital in Los Angeles, California. During her 44 year career, she had appeared in 84 films, conquered Broadway, been immortalized in the cement outside Grauman's Chinese Theater, and become one of America's most beloved stars. Ruth Elizabeth Grable was survived at her death by her daughters Victoria Elizabeth James and Jessica James. She was honored after her death with a place on the Walk of Fame in the city of her birth, St. Louis Missouri. |
