Radio Digest (June 1932-Mar 1933)

26 Q)herokee Jjeauty Lovely Lee Wiley is Proud of Her Indian Blood — Wins Success three Months from Day She Left Oklahoma By George H. Corey I AST autumn a girl from a little town in Oklahoma, visiting New A York, was taken to the Central Park Casino. It was her first time inside a smart New York night club. She gazed with excitement at the couples whirling smoothly over the floor. On the orchestra platform Leo Reisman and his boys propelled the dancers with hushed notes of syncopation. The dim lights, the music and the soft autumn breeze had the effect of magic upon the girl from Oklahoma. From childhood she had been singing and now she dreamed of herself as really a part of this setting. The dancers became dim and even the music was hardly audible as her mind carried her deeper into the realm of imagination. She was awakened from her dreaming with a start when her escort gently touched her arm and said, "Lee, I want you to meet my friend, Leo Reisman, the leader of the orchestra." He then introduced the girl to Reisman and added, "Lee, I want you to sing for Mr. Reisman tonight. I think he should hear you." Was her face red ! She tried to protest, but what started in her throat as words ended in stammered bits of nothing. She couldn't talk. Before she could collect herself she was poised alongside the big piano in the deserted porch wing of the Casino. Reisman ran his fingers over the dusty keys and broke into the melody of "My Man," playing in a low key. In the quiet of the empty room her smooth, deep voice brought a new note (if plaintiveness to the old song. A small group of listeners exchanged glances in silence as they communicated the feeling aroused within them by her voice. They seemed to forget they were listen ing to a singer. It was more like one telling a story — a story that came from the heart and was told in rhythm. Then came the end of, the song and the listeners relaxed from the tenseness that had gripped them while the girl sang. Reisman sat motionless before the piano, his eyes focused upon her. Two weeks later Lee Wiley made her first radio appearance on the Pond's program, singing choruses with Leo Reisman's orchestra. She continued in this part until this fall, when Leo gave her a more prominent position on the program. Though it has been a long trek from her birthplace, Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, a former Indian defense outpost, to New York, Lee admits with a shrug of her shoulders that she made the jaunt quickly. Though she had sung for many years, beginning first in the village Sunday school at Fort Gibson and later in concerts in Tulsa and Muskogee, she had never thought of herself as a radio artist. She admits that no one was more surprised than Lee Wiley when she found herself singing over the air. Miss Wiley half boastfully admits of being one fourth Cherokee Indian. The rest is just plain American. Coming from a family of teachers, both mother and father teaching in the Oklahoma State Normal College, Lee says she would probably have followed their footsteps if she hadn't developed as a singer. Something Lee never learned in school was how to sing a ballad of love in that infectious style that makes her seem to feel very deeply the emotions suggested by the words. Maybe this came naturally to her, but the manner in which she projects the amorous vibrations of her voice through the microphone is radio art in its most effective form. This little girl who tells stories in song over the air lives alone in an apartment in the upper fifties in New York, close to the NBC Fifth Avenue studios. The whole apartment is decorated in pure white, touched here and there with bits of scarlet. At a tiny piano in one corner of her living room this pretty songster may often be seen for hours at a time writing her own musical compositions. "South in My Soul" is one of hers and now she is working on one to be known as "Anytime, Any Day, Anywhere." You will goon hear it on the air. When not writing music or reading Lee's likely to be found cantering around the bridle path in Central Park. She has her own horse, and coming from the country where men are men and the women ride horses she is right at home on the back of her animal. Lee's transformation from the modest little girl living in the upper fifties, to her studio personality, marks a contrast worthy of any legitimate stage actress. The carefree, laughing manner so characteristic of her away-from-the-microphone-personality is shed like a cloak the moment she approaches the broadcasting studio. Every external feature of the Cherokee songster becomes tense and every suggestion of the happy-hearted girl from Oklahoma vanishes. An air of smouldering quiet comes over her. Her youthful face is transformed into sleek, Dietrich-like planes of tense whiteness. Her movements become slower and more deliberate, as she walks over the deep, sound absorbing carpets covering the studio floor. Her greeting to the boys in Leo Reisman's orchestra is strained and formal, as though she were behind a glass partition, as one of the boys put it. But they don't mind it, for they know it is only a part of that strange self she will soon project over the air to her ever invisible audience. For this one hour each week, Lee abandons the dozens of colorful frocks in her wardrobe and dons what she calls her "Mike dress." Cape-like and of black velvet it drapes softly about her contrasting effectively with the firm whiteness of her face and neck. The signal is given to stand by for the beginning of the broadcast. A hush comes over the studio and the orchestra players sit motionless, instruments poised for the first note of the program. Lee is standing close to her microphone, slightly huddled over a music stand. She seems to be riveted to the spot and from a side view gives the suggestion of a priest, in his black surplice, leaning over the pulpit. The orchestra is nearing the end of its introduction, and the announcer is standing by. A soft, plaintive tone flows over the studio. Lee is singing. If you ask Lee if she is nervous during the program she will reply with a shrug of her shoulders and an uplifted hand, from which dangles the torn shreds of a handkerchief, "One of these to a broadcast." Carelessly she will flick the torn bit of chiffon to the floor and slip quietly out of the studio.