Born Ruth Elizabeth Grable on 18 December 1916 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, the future performer died on 2 July 1973 in Santa Monica, California, USA. She worked as an actress, singer and dancer in Hollywood musicals across the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Renowned for her blonde beauty and peaches-and-cream complexion, Grable became a global pin-up during World War II after servicemen everywhere posted the celebrated photograph of her in a white bathing suit, glancing over her right shoulder to reveal the shapely legs reportedly insured for a million dollars.
Prompted by her mother, she began voice and dance instruction at an early age and appeared in chorus lines for such early sound films as Let’s Go Places, New Movietone Follies Of 1930 and Whoopee! while still in her early teens. Throughout the 1930s, sometimes credited as Frances Dean, she filled supporting parts in comedies including Hold ’Em Jail and The Nitwits as well as musicals such as Palmy Days, The Kid From Spain, Student Tour, The Gay Divorcee, Old Man Rhythm, Collegiate, Follow The Fleet, Pigskin Parade, This Way Please, College Swing, Give Me A Sailor and Million Dollar Legs (1939). In the same year she earned a featured role in the Broadway production Du Barry Was A Lady, where she joined Charles Walters to introduce Cole Porter’s socially scandalous number “Well, Did You Evah?”
Grable married former child star Jackie Coogan in 1937; their 1940 divorce coincided with her signing at 20th-Century Fox and her promotion to leading-lady status. After sharing the screen with Don Ameche in Down Argentine Way, she partnered with such leading men as John Payne, Victor Mature, Dan Dailey, George Montgomery, Cesar Romero, Robert Cummings and Dick Haymes in a succession of tuneful vehicles that included Tin Pan Alley, Moon Over Miami, Footlight Serenade, Song Of The Islands, Springtime In The Rockies, Coney Island, Sweet Rosie O’Grady, Four Jills In A Jeep, Pin Up Girl, Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe, The Dolly Sisters, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, Mother Wore Tights, That Lady In Ermine, When My Baby Smiles At Me, The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend, Wabash Avenue, My Blue Heaven, Call Me Mister, Meet Me After The Show, The Farmer Takes A Wife and Three For The Show (1955). Many of these stories were placed at the turn of the century, and by the late 1950s the style of musical she embodied had itself become a period artifact.
She performed in nightclubs, appeared on television and collaborated with her second husband, bandleader Harry James, until their 1964 divorce. In 1967 she assumed the title role originated by Carol Channing in the Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! and later led a touring company. Two years afterward she journeyed to London for a short-lived engagement in the lavish but unsuccessful American musical Belle Starr at the Palace Theatre. Returning to the United States, she continued working in television and regional theatre until her death from cancer at age 56. Fans finally received a long-awaited 1997 anthology comprising 48 original Grable performances drawn from soundtracks dating back to 1930.
