Biography
From the 1930s through the 1950s, singer and actress Jane Pickens sustained a broad professional presence in nightclubs, legitimate theater, radio, recordings, and television. Born August 10, 1912—though some references cite 1908 or 1909—in Macon, GA, she was one of four sisters. At fourteen she moved to Philadelphia for music studies at the Curtis Institute, later continuing at Fontainebleau in Paris before completing a Master’s degree at Juilliard. The family meanwhile relocated to Atlanta and then, in 1932, to New York. There Pickens, performing at the time under the name Georgia Pickens, joined two sisters to form the vocal trio the Pickens Sisters. The group secured a contract with RCA Victor, issuing its first single, “Was That the Human Thing to Do?”/“Goodnight, Moon,” on February 16, 1932, and soon began regular radio broadcasts. Their screen debut arrived in the 1933 film Sitting Pretty, whose score yielded the hit RCA recording “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?” A year afterward the trio reached Broadway in the revue Thumbs Up!, which opened December 27, 1934; Jane Pickens received credit for the show’s vocal arrangements.
The Pickens Sisters disbanded once her sisters married and withdrew from performing. Pickens herself wed Russell Clark and bore a daughter, yet the marriage ended in divorce, prompting her return to work. She continued radio appearances, including NBC’s Saturday Night Party, made occasional recordings, performed live with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and reappeared on Broadway as a soloist in the revues Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 (September 14, 1936) and Boys and Girls Together (October 1, 1940). Columbia Records issued her four-disc 78 rpm set Jane Pickens Sings in 1940. In May 1946 she was featured on CBS’s American Melody Hour while headlining at the Waldorf-Astoria’s Wedgewood Room.
Her initial Broadway role in a book musical occurred in the operetta Regina, which opened October 31, 1949, with Pickens in the title part. Her last Broadway credit came in the 1951 revival of Music in the Air, beginning October 8; RCA released her album of songs from that production. Between January and September 1954 she hosted the fifteen-minute Sunday-night musical series The Jane Pickens Show on ABC. Later that year she married investment broker William C. Langley and stepped back from full-time professional work. Langley died in 1962. In 1972 Pickens entered politics, mounting an unsuccessful Republican-Conservative campaign for the House of Representatives against incumbent Ed Koch, later mayor of New York. She married Walter Hoving, proprietor of Tiffany and Bonwit Teller, in 1977; he died in 1989. Pickens spent her final years on Park Avenue and in Newport, RI, concentrating on philanthropic pursuits until her death in Newport on February 21, 1992.
The Pickens Sisters disbanded once her sisters married and withdrew from performing. Pickens herself wed Russell Clark and bore a daughter, yet the marriage ended in divorce, prompting her return to work. She continued radio appearances, including NBC’s Saturday Night Party, made occasional recordings, performed live with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and reappeared on Broadway as a soloist in the revues Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 (September 14, 1936) and Boys and Girls Together (October 1, 1940). Columbia Records issued her four-disc 78 rpm set Jane Pickens Sings in 1940. In May 1946 she was featured on CBS’s American Melody Hour while headlining at the Waldorf-Astoria’s Wedgewood Room.
Her initial Broadway role in a book musical occurred in the operetta Regina, which opened October 31, 1949, with Pickens in the title part. Her last Broadway credit came in the 1951 revival of Music in the Air, beginning October 8; RCA released her album of songs from that production. Between January and September 1954 she hosted the fifteen-minute Sunday-night musical series The Jane Pickens Show on ABC. Later that year she married investment broker William C. Langley and stepped back from full-time professional work. Langley died in 1962. In 1972 Pickens entered politics, mounting an unsuccessful Republican-Conservative campaign for the House of Representatives against incumbent Ed Koch, later mayor of New York. She married Walter Hoving, proprietor of Tiffany and Bonwit Teller, in 1977; he died in 1989. Pickens spent her final years on Park Avenue and in Newport, RI, concentrating on philanthropic pursuits until her death in Newport on February 21, 1992.