Biography
Standing tall with blonde hair and an attractive figure, Dolores Gray commanded attention through her powerful contralto voice while taking leading roles in both theatrical productions and Hollywood musicals during the 1940s and 1950s. She also performed on radio and television, headlined in nightclubs, cut material for two major record companies beyond her original cast and soundtrack work, and placed a number of singles on the charts. Although she never reached the heights of contemporaries such as Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, Gray proved a reliable second-tier performer who sustained a steady career, above all in the theater, spanning the 1940s to the 1980s.
Her childhood unfolded in Chicago. After her parents divorced when she was two, her father passed away five years later. As a young girl she became caught in gang crossfire in her hometown and was shot in the chest; because doctors judged the wound inoperable, she carried the bullet in her left lung for the remainder of her life. Following the incident her mother relocated the family to Los Angeles, where Gray studied voice and made her nightclub debut at the age of 14. At 15 she caught the attention of Rudy Vallée, who featured her on his coast-to-coast radio program. In August 1941, at 17, she joined the cast of the Los Angeles musical revue Fun for the Money, and shortly afterward she made her film debut in an uncredited role as a singer named Dolores in the 1942 drama Lady for a Night. Two years later she received her first screen credit, again portraying a singer, in the drama Mr. Skeffington.
Gray headed to New York and reached Broadway at 20 in the musical revue The Seven Lively Arts, performing songs by Cole Porter. The production opened on December 7, 1944, completed 182 performances, and closed on May 12, 1945. She soon returned to Broadway in a larger part in the musical comedy Are You With It?, which began its run on November 10, 1945, logged 267 performances, and closed on June 29, 1946. Her following vehicle, Vernon Duke and Ogden Nash’s Sweet Bye and Bye, shuttered out of town in the fall of 1946, yet after serving as understudy to Ethel Merman in Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun she was chosen by producers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II for the title role of Annie Oakley in the London staging. She made her debut on her 23rd birthday, June 7, 1947, and scored an enormous success with British audiences. The show tallied 1,304 performances—surpassing its Broadway longevity—and Gray remained with the company through most of 1950. Postwar Britain offered no market for full original cast albums of the sort then succeeding in the United States, so the London company preserved the score in medley form across two 78-rpm EPs issued by English Columbia, marking Gray’s first recordings. Rod McKuen’s Stanyan Records later acquired rights to several such sets for American release, issuing a 1972 LP that combined the London Annie Get Your Gun and Oklahoma! tracks; more recently the budget label LaserLight released a CD edition of the London Annie Get Your Gun supplemented with bonus material.
Gray came back to the United States in 1951 as a stage star virtually unrecognized at home. She returned to Broadway, sharing the bill with Bert Lahr in the musical revue Two on the Aisle, which featured music by Jule Styne and lyrics and sketches by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The show opened July 19, 1951, ran 276 performances, and closed March 15, 1952; Gray distinguished herself with the rapid-fire number “If You Hadn’t, But You Did.” Decca Records captured the original Broadway cast album, providing her first American release. The label also signed her to an exclusive contract, and she began cutting singles, beginning with a cover of “Shrimp Boats,” the Jo Stafford hit that reached number two in the fall of 1951; Gray’s version entered the Top 20. Six additional Decca singles appeared during 1952.
She next moved into television, co-starring in the live New York series The Buick Circus Hour, which premiered October 7, 1952, and aired every fourth week through the 1952–1953 season before concluding on June 16, 1953. During this period she scored two further chart singles with pop readings of Hank Williams’s “Kaw-Liga” and the Cajun favorite “Big Mamou.” The stage nevertheless remained her central focus, and she returned to Broadway to headline the musical Carnival in Flanders. The production drew on several Hollywood figures making their Broadway debuts: the book came from acclaimed film director Preston Sturges, while the songs were supplied by James Van Heusen and Johnny Burke, writers more familiar with material for Bing Crosby pictures. They gave Gray several strong numbers, notably “Here’s That Rainy Day,” yet the show proved a failure, opening September 8, 1953, and closing four days later after only six performances. Even so, Gray received the Tony Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical.
She added another chart entry with her recording of “Lost in Loveliness” from the film The Girl in Pink Tights in the summer of 1954. That winter Decca released the soundtrack album for the film There’s No Business Like Show Business, in which Marilyn Monroe appeared; because Monroe held an exclusive RCA Victor contract, Gray sang Monroe’s songs on the album. She continued recording for Decca into 1955, although the label never issued a full-length album under her name. (In 2003, once the earliest of those Decca sides entered the public domain in Europe, British label Sepia assembled 25 of them on the CD Spotlight on Dolores Gray.)
Her growing film connections secured an MGM contract in 1955. The studio first cast her as co-star in the original musical It’s Always Fair Weather, released in September 1955 and accompanied by an MGM soundtrack album of songs by André Previn with Comden and Green on which Gray appeared. Only three months later she co-starred in MGM’s screen version of the Broadway musical Kismet, again featured on the MGM Records soundtrack album. Subsequent roles came in the musical remake of The Women, retitled The Opposite Sex and released in November 1956, and in the comedy Designing Woman in May 1957. Approaching 33, however, Gray could not attain major stardom in Hollywood, and the waning of movie musicals rendered such success improbable. She departed MGM after four pictures. Signing with Capitol Records, she resumed issuing singles and released an album titled Warm Brandy, drawn from a London critic’s description of her voice. She continued appearing on television and in nightclubs until, in 1959, she took another Broadway role: Frenchy, the part originated on screen by Marlene Dietrich, in a musical adaptation of Destry Rides Again. The show opened April 23, 1959, ran 473 performances, and closed June 18, 1960. Gray earned a Tony nomination for her performance, and Decca issued an original Broadway cast album that reached the charts.
After closing in Destry Rides Again, Gray’s visibility diminished. In 1967 she returned to Broadway in Sherry!, a musical version of the comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner, which opened March 28 and closed May 27 after 72 performances. In 1973 she replaced Angela Lansbury in a London revival of Gypsy when Lansbury transferred to the New York production, later stepping into the New York company herself. She was perfectly suited to the London revival of Follies that opened July 21, 1987, delivering, at age 63, Stephen Sondheim’s reflective number “I’m Still Here” and preserving it on the cast album issued by First Night Records in the U.K. She made occasional stage and television appearances into the 1990s. In the 1960s she married real estate developer and racehorse owner Andrew Crevolin; the couple divorced in the 1970s but later reconciled and remarried, remaining together until Crevolin’s death in 1992. Ten years afterward Gray suffered a heart attack in her Manhattan apartment and died at the age of 78.
Her childhood unfolded in Chicago. After her parents divorced when she was two, her father passed away five years later. As a young girl she became caught in gang crossfire in her hometown and was shot in the chest; because doctors judged the wound inoperable, she carried the bullet in her left lung for the remainder of her life. Following the incident her mother relocated the family to Los Angeles, where Gray studied voice and made her nightclub debut at the age of 14. At 15 she caught the attention of Rudy Vallée, who featured her on his coast-to-coast radio program. In August 1941, at 17, she joined the cast of the Los Angeles musical revue Fun for the Money, and shortly afterward she made her film debut in an uncredited role as a singer named Dolores in the 1942 drama Lady for a Night. Two years later she received her first screen credit, again portraying a singer, in the drama Mr. Skeffington.
Gray headed to New York and reached Broadway at 20 in the musical revue The Seven Lively Arts, performing songs by Cole Porter. The production opened on December 7, 1944, completed 182 performances, and closed on May 12, 1945. She soon returned to Broadway in a larger part in the musical comedy Are You With It?, which began its run on November 10, 1945, logged 267 performances, and closed on June 29, 1946. Her following vehicle, Vernon Duke and Ogden Nash’s Sweet Bye and Bye, shuttered out of town in the fall of 1946, yet after serving as understudy to Ethel Merman in Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun she was chosen by producers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II for the title role of Annie Oakley in the London staging. She made her debut on her 23rd birthday, June 7, 1947, and scored an enormous success with British audiences. The show tallied 1,304 performances—surpassing its Broadway longevity—and Gray remained with the company through most of 1950. Postwar Britain offered no market for full original cast albums of the sort then succeeding in the United States, so the London company preserved the score in medley form across two 78-rpm EPs issued by English Columbia, marking Gray’s first recordings. Rod McKuen’s Stanyan Records later acquired rights to several such sets for American release, issuing a 1972 LP that combined the London Annie Get Your Gun and Oklahoma! tracks; more recently the budget label LaserLight released a CD edition of the London Annie Get Your Gun supplemented with bonus material.
Gray came back to the United States in 1951 as a stage star virtually unrecognized at home. She returned to Broadway, sharing the bill with Bert Lahr in the musical revue Two on the Aisle, which featured music by Jule Styne and lyrics and sketches by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The show opened July 19, 1951, ran 276 performances, and closed March 15, 1952; Gray distinguished herself with the rapid-fire number “If You Hadn’t, But You Did.” Decca Records captured the original Broadway cast album, providing her first American release. The label also signed her to an exclusive contract, and she began cutting singles, beginning with a cover of “Shrimp Boats,” the Jo Stafford hit that reached number two in the fall of 1951; Gray’s version entered the Top 20. Six additional Decca singles appeared during 1952.
She next moved into television, co-starring in the live New York series The Buick Circus Hour, which premiered October 7, 1952, and aired every fourth week through the 1952–1953 season before concluding on June 16, 1953. During this period she scored two further chart singles with pop readings of Hank Williams’s “Kaw-Liga” and the Cajun favorite “Big Mamou.” The stage nevertheless remained her central focus, and she returned to Broadway to headline the musical Carnival in Flanders. The production drew on several Hollywood figures making their Broadway debuts: the book came from acclaimed film director Preston Sturges, while the songs were supplied by James Van Heusen and Johnny Burke, writers more familiar with material for Bing Crosby pictures. They gave Gray several strong numbers, notably “Here’s That Rainy Day,” yet the show proved a failure, opening September 8, 1953, and closing four days later after only six performances. Even so, Gray received the Tony Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical.
She added another chart entry with her recording of “Lost in Loveliness” from the film The Girl in Pink Tights in the summer of 1954. That winter Decca released the soundtrack album for the film There’s No Business Like Show Business, in which Marilyn Monroe appeared; because Monroe held an exclusive RCA Victor contract, Gray sang Monroe’s songs on the album. She continued recording for Decca into 1955, although the label never issued a full-length album under her name. (In 2003, once the earliest of those Decca sides entered the public domain in Europe, British label Sepia assembled 25 of them on the CD Spotlight on Dolores Gray.)
Her growing film connections secured an MGM contract in 1955. The studio first cast her as co-star in the original musical It’s Always Fair Weather, released in September 1955 and accompanied by an MGM soundtrack album of songs by André Previn with Comden and Green on which Gray appeared. Only three months later she co-starred in MGM’s screen version of the Broadway musical Kismet, again featured on the MGM Records soundtrack album. Subsequent roles came in the musical remake of The Women, retitled The Opposite Sex and released in November 1956, and in the comedy Designing Woman in May 1957. Approaching 33, however, Gray could not attain major stardom in Hollywood, and the waning of movie musicals rendered such success improbable. She departed MGM after four pictures. Signing with Capitol Records, she resumed issuing singles and released an album titled Warm Brandy, drawn from a London critic’s description of her voice. She continued appearing on television and in nightclubs until, in 1959, she took another Broadway role: Frenchy, the part originated on screen by Marlene Dietrich, in a musical adaptation of Destry Rides Again. The show opened April 23, 1959, ran 473 performances, and closed June 18, 1960. Gray earned a Tony nomination for her performance, and Decca issued an original Broadway cast album that reached the charts.
After closing in Destry Rides Again, Gray’s visibility diminished. In 1967 she returned to Broadway in Sherry!, a musical version of the comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner, which opened March 28 and closed May 27 after 72 performances. In 1973 she replaced Angela Lansbury in a London revival of Gypsy when Lansbury transferred to the New York production, later stepping into the New York company herself. She was perfectly suited to the London revival of Follies that opened July 21, 1987, delivering, at age 63, Stephen Sondheim’s reflective number “I’m Still Here” and preserving it on the cast album issued by First Night Records in the U.K. She made occasional stage and television appearances into the 1990s. In the 1960s she married real estate developer and racehorse owner Andrew Crevolin; the couple divorced in the 1970s but later reconciled and remarried, remaining together until Crevolin’s death in 1992. Ten years afterward Gray suffered a heart attack in her Manhattan apartment and died at the age of 78.
Albums
Singles
Rose Of Washington Square/Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home (Medley/Live On The Ed Sullivan Show, July 11, 1965)
2021
Alexander's Ragtime Band/Here We Are In Chicago/Hello My Baby (Medley/Live On The Ed Sullivan Show, November 6, 1960)
2021
Night And Day (Performed Live On The Ed Sullivan Show /1952)
2010
Live
