Radio doings (Dec 1930-Jun1932)

Then ALONG Came RUTH The Story of Ruth Etting, the Little Dressmaker s Assistant Who Became the Toast of Broadway ALFRED H. ETTING, the town banker of David City, Neb., had a slender, golden-haired child called Ruth. Her environment was staunch, and thoroughly American. If you venture into her home town you will see the Etting Roller Mills, a monument to the industry of her pioneer grandfather, George Etting. Her uncle, Alex Etting, is the town mayor today. With that precedent, Ruth might have married and "settled down" in a respectable town which had harbored Ettings for three generations. But, fate evidently decreed she was not "a flower born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air," for at an early age, Ruth showed signs of being artistic. A circus which came to David City, instilled in Ruth a desire to be an actress. However, as she grew up, her talents seemed to point toward the career of a commercial artist. Her father had to buy her a new set of school books when this new fever cropped up because she copied Nell Brinkley drawings all over them! Aged sixteen and wide-eyed she journeyed to the Academy of Arts, Chicago, to study designing. She was terrified and appalled by the higher-than-three-story building and the elevated railroads. In an astonishingly short time, Ruth's old yearning for the theatre led her to designing clothes for revues at the old Marigold Gardens of Chicago. She met Edward Beck, the producer, and his wife. They induced her to join the Marigold chorus for $25 a week. She had to quit school then and there because she couldn't get up in time. Working afternoons for a dressmaker and evenings for the chorus, she by Hilda Cole kept going, until she finally got the necessary break. The juvenile lead (which she had secretly and wistfully understudied) took sick, and she was delighted beyond adjectives to be told to take the part. She put on over-sized boots and a polo outfit for the act, and sang for the first time in her life. She got a $15 raise for making good but she broke down and cried when assigned to a separate dressing room away from her chorus buddies. When art school opened in the fall, Ruth was not in her old place because this one chance led to bigger and better engagements (an unheard of $100 a week) around Chicago cafes — but she finally chucked it to go to Big Jim Colisimo's. Listen to what Ruth says about this: "Crooning, at least as far as I am concerned, was born in Big Jim Colisimo's. You see, Big Jim wouldn't let any girls sing from the stage. The idea was to go around from table to table and, sitting at each one, sing privately for each group of guests. In order to be heard above the blare of the band you had to acquire a special voice quality — penetrating, yet intimate." Here, Ruth received no regular salary. She, together with the other girls, worked for tips. Every morning, after the last guest had gone, which was sometimes after 9 A. M., they all divvied up. Station WLS in Chicago was upstairs from a cafe in which Ruth appeared in a revue. The station manager dropped in one night and asked if she would go on the air, and that accounted for her first radio appearance. Columbia records tuned in on the program a year or so later, and that was how she started recording. And, as Ruth says, "It was a natural step and just shows how everything you do is really leading to something else, although you may not know it at the time." Ziegfeld heard some of her records in New York, and immediately sent someone out to enlist her for the Follies. Opportunity knocked once, and Ruth wasn't the least bit hard-of-hearing. She went to New York and signed with the Follies. Ruth sang for a short engagement with Paul Whiteman before she joined the Follies of 1927 ... for which Irving Berlin wrote the music. "Soon after arriving in New York, he sent for me," says Ruth. "Just as I started to sing for him he got up, put his hands up to his head, and walked nervously around the room. Then he left. Naturally I stopped, but a friend with me whispered, 'Go ahead, he's listening in the next room. That's what he always does when he's interested.' I wonder what he does when he's bored!" After that Ruth's career was a swift up-sweep on the graph of popularity and fame. Next year came the Follies of 1928. "Whoopee" in 1929 with Eddie Cantor, "Simple Simon" with Ed Wynn in 1930, and then last year's Follies. Blues songs are Ruth's chief stock in trade. Walter Winchell, Broadway's most "hard-berled" of commentators said she was "The Queen of Torch Warblers." Strictly speaking, they are the laments of frustrated lovers who "carry the torch," as Broadway columnists put it, for unresponsive lovers. Among her most intimate numbers have been "Love Me or Leave Me," "Ten Cents a Dance" (which by the way was responsible for police inspection of dance halls, and ultimate improvement of conditions), "Cigars, Cigarettes," and "Shine On Harvest Moon," whereby hangs a tale. This song was written by Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth, her husband, and [Turn to Page 19] Page Eight RADIO DOINGS