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| How his fans saw him, I figure. |
People of earlier generations may know Rudy Vallee (there’s an accent aigu over the first “e,” for what it’s worth), born Hubert Prior Vallee, as Lord Marmaduke Ffogg in the old Adam West Batman series; even earlier generations may recall him from supporting roles in 1940s films like The Palm Beach Story, Unfaithfully Yours, The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer, or even 1955’s Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, a sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, both based on novels by Anita Loos.
But Vallee started elsewhere - and as something entirely bigger. From a very brief biography from the New England Historical Society:
“Women swooned when he would show his face in public and a crowd followed him everywhere. Watching his popularity, jokers said his effect on women made him a national menace.”
Most sources call Rudy Vallee one of America’s first crooners - if, inexplicably, without naming any other pretenders to that velvet crown. He was the phenomenon of Beatlemania before the Beatles, but he captured his audience through a national radio show rather than television. And yet Vallee relied on technology as much as anyone who came before him, if not more. Vallee need a microphone to reach the back of a large venue; even then, he often had to sing through a megaphone to make his “thin, wavering tenor voice” audible over the masses of flappers who screamed through his shows. (An old Betty Boop cartoon lampooned the megaphone.) On the other hand, that same gentle voice worked wonders on the radio, creating a personal, intimate rapport with his listeners, letting them get lost in the illusion that he was “coaxing, pleading and at the same time adoring the invisible one to whom his song is attuned.”
In a 1958 television interview with Mike Wallace (fascinating just for what it looks like), one that took place a couple decades after his peak radio fame, Vallee was oddly defensive about the female adulation, insisting that he saw plenty of men in his audiences. As much as he resisted, Vallee’s reluctance doesn’t make sense against the record. That New England Historical Society bio confirmed the same while hinting at some other theories, several of which Wallace brought up, all of which Vallee either denied or pushed back against:
But Vallee started elsewhere - and as something entirely bigger. From a very brief biography from the New England Historical Society:
“Women swooned when he would show his face in public and a crowd followed him everywhere. Watching his popularity, jokers said his effect on women made him a national menace.”
Most sources call Rudy Vallee one of America’s first crooners - if, inexplicably, without naming any other pretenders to that velvet crown. He was the phenomenon of Beatlemania before the Beatles, but he captured his audience through a national radio show rather than television. And yet Vallee relied on technology as much as anyone who came before him, if not more. Vallee need a microphone to reach the back of a large venue; even then, he often had to sing through a megaphone to make his “thin, wavering tenor voice” audible over the masses of flappers who screamed through his shows. (An old Betty Boop cartoon lampooned the megaphone.) On the other hand, that same gentle voice worked wonders on the radio, creating a personal, intimate rapport with his listeners, letting them get lost in the illusion that he was “coaxing, pleading and at the same time adoring the invisible one to whom his song is attuned.”
In a 1958 television interview with Mike Wallace (fascinating just for what it looks like), one that took place a couple decades after his peak radio fame, Vallee was oddly defensive about the female adulation, insisting that he saw plenty of men in his audiences. As much as he resisted, Vallee’s reluctance doesn’t make sense against the record. That New England Historical Society bio confirmed the same while hinting at some other theories, several of which Wallace brought up, all of which Vallee either denied or pushed back against:
