Ginny Simms

Ginny Simms emerged as a prominent entertainer during the mid-1940s wartime era, whether performing alongside Kay Kyser’s orchestra or pursuing independent work. Although Texas was her birthplace, she grew up in California and took up piano during childhood, yet her interest in singing first took shape at Fresno State Teachers College, where she assembled a vocal trio alongside two fellow students. Club engagements soon followed, and one such performance in a San Francisco venue caught the attention of bandleader Kay Kyser, who recruited her into his organization.

Simms rose to become the featured vocalist and a leading draw for Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowlege, a quiz-show-styled revue that blended comedy with both swing and pop selections. Beyond radio broadcasts and recordings issued on Brunswick and Vocalion in the 1930s plus Columbia in the 1940s, she joined Kyser in his RKO pictures, beginning with That’s Right, You’re Wrong (1939). Even while with the band, she received solo radio spots and released material credited to Ginny Simms & Her Orchestra that employed Kyser’s musicians. Seeking relief from constant touring, she departed the group in the early 1940s to launch a solo path.

Her Philip Morris-sponsored NBC program brought her widespread recognition throughout the war years, as she conducted on-air interviews with servicemen stationed around the world, enabling them to relay personal messages home. Equally adept at swing and pop interpretations, Simms also possessed striking features—most notably prominent cheekbones—that translated naturally to the screen. She took a substantial supporting part in the Abbott and Costello comedy Hit the Ice (1943), performing four numbers that included the ballad “I’d Like to Set You to Music.” Subsequent leading roles came in the MGM Technicolor production Broadway Rhythm (1944) opposite George Murphy and Gloria DeHaven, followed by Shady Lady (1945) and Night and Day (1946).

After the war, shifting tastes rendered her style of music and musical films less viable, prompting her retirement from the screen by 1951. Her recording activity likewise concluded shortly thereafter, though she revisited the studio for a Capitol collection devoted to Kyser’s repertoire in the early 1950s and a stereo album of her own performances in late 1960. Married on three occasions, Simms passed away in 1994.