Gertrude Niesen
Acting
Biography
Gertrude Niesen was an American torch singer, actress, comedian, and songwriter who achieved popular success in musicals and films in the 1930s and 1940s. Niesen began singing as a career in the early 1930s, first appearing (credited as Gertrude Nissen) with Roger Wolfe Kahn and His Orchestra and Artie Shaw in a Vitaphone short film, Yacht Party. On old-time radio, Niesen was the featured singer on The Ex-Lax Big Show and host of The Show Shop, on NBC-Blue. She recorded for Victor, Columbia, and Brunswick in the 1930s, and in 1933 was the first to record the song "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach. She appeared in the Broadway musical Calling All Stars in 1934 and in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936. Her Broadway credits also include Follow the Girls and Take a Chance. She also began to appear regularly in movies, including Top of the Town, Start Cheering, and A Night at Earl Carroll's, in which she sang a song that she co-wrote, "I Want to Make with the Happy Times". Her other films included Rookies on Parade), This Is the Army, He's My Guy, and The Babe Ruth Story. She co-starred with Jackie Gleason in the 1944 stage musical Follow the Girls, in which she sang "I Want to Get Married", one of her better-known songs. She recorded for Decca Records throughout the 1940s, and released a self-titled LP for the label in 1951.She also appeared on many radio shows and on TV in the early 1950s. In 1943, Niesen married Chicago nightclub owner Al Greenfield. The couple divorced but remarried in 1954, remaining married until Niesen’s death in Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Hollywood, California in 1975, aged 63, after a long illness.
Known For
After retiring from movies to get an education, a man discovers his ex-staff is trying to have him expelled.
Start Cheering
In WW I dancer Jerry Jones stages an all-soldier show on Broadway, called Yip Yip Yaphank. Wounded in the War, he becomes a producer. In WW II his son Johnny Jones, who was before his fathers assistant, gets the order to stage a knew all-soldier show, called THIS IS THE ARMY. But in his pesonal life he has problems, because he refuses to marry his fiancée until the war is over.
This Is the Army
The baseball player goes from wayward youth to Boston Red Sox pitcher to New York Yankees home-run hero.
The Babe Ruth Story
In this musical set in swingin' Manhattan, an heiress plans a ballet in the famous Moonbeam ballroom located atop a 100-story skyscraper. Unfortunately, the attending audience is quite bored until someone starts the place swinging. Musical numbers include: "Blame It on the Rhumba," "Where Are You?" "Jamboree," "Top of the Town," "I Feel That Foolish Feeling Coming On," "There's No Two Ways About It," "Fireman Save My Child"
Top of the Town
The story details the misadventures of two itinerant songwriters named Duke (Crosby) and Cliff (Foy) as they try to survive Army boot camp. Intending to boost the morale of their fellow draftees, our heroes stage a big musical show, which they eventually hope will graduate to Broadway.
Rookies on Parade
The former members of a vaudeville team meet up again in a defense plant during WW II.
He's My Guy
On a set resembling a yacht, Roger Wolfe Kahn leads his orchestra in several popular tunes of the day. Billed and un-billed guest acts also perform. At the end, Kahn thrills his guests by piloting a biplane.
The Yacht Party
Fleischer Studios giving "Stormy Weather (Keeps Rainin' All the Time)" the 'Screen Song' bouncing ball treatment.