Keeler, Ruby (1909–1993)

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Keeler, Ruby (1909–1993)

American actress, dancer, and singer, best known for her energetic hoofing in films of the 1930s. Name variations: Ruby Keeler Jolson. Born Ethel Hilda Keeler on August 25, 1909, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada; died on February 28, 1993, in Palm Springs, California; one of six children (five girls and a boy) of Ralph Keeler (a truck driver) and Elnora (Lehy) Keeler; attended parochial school and Professional Children's School, New York; married Al Jolson (a singer-actor), on September 21, 1928 (divorced 1940); married John Lowe (a real estate broker), on October 29, 1941 (died 1969); children: (adopted with Jolson) son, Al (whose name was later changed to Peter); (second marriage) John Lowe;Christine Lowe ; Theresa Lowe ; Kathleen Lowe .

Selected theater:

made professional appearances in cabaret as a buck-dancer; made theater debut in the chorus of The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly (Liberty Theater, New York, December 1923); appeared as Ruby in Bye Bye Bonnie (Ritz Theater, January 1927), Mazie Maxwell in Lucky Knickerbocker (New Amsterdam Theater, March 1927), Mamie and Ruby in Sidewalks of New York (Knickerbocker Theater, October 1927); appeared in Whoopee (New Amsterdam Theater, December 1928); appeared in the revue Show Girl (Ziegfeld Theater, July 1929); appeared as Shirley in Hold Onto Your Hats (Grand Opera House, Chicago, Illinois, July 1940), Sue Smith in No, No, Nanette (46th St. Theater, January 1971).

Filmography:

(bit part) Show Girl in Hollywood (1930); 42nd Street (1933); Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933); Footlight Parade (1933); Dames (1934); Flirtation Walk (1934); Go Into Your Dance (1935); Shipmates Forever (1935); Colleen (1936); Ready, Willing and Able (1937); Mother Carey's Chickens (1938); Sweetheart of the Campus (1941); (cameo) The Phynx (1970).

Ruby Keeler will forever be associated with a series of lavish Warner Bros. movie musicals of the late Depression era, many of which became classics because of their colossal dance numbers staged by Busby Berkeley. Frequently cast as the sweet-natured chorine who fills in for the ailing star at the last minute, and usually paired with Dick Powell, Keeler retired from films in 1941, but made a phenomenal comeback in the 1971 stage revival of No, No Nanette. No one was more surprised by her successful return to the stage than the actress herself, as she had never been overly confident about her looks or her talent and had always viewed her career with some amazement. "I couldn't act," she said in 1966. "I had that terrible singing voice, and now I can see I wasn't the greatest tap dancer in the world, either."

Ruby Keeler was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1909, but the family moved to New York when she was three, settling in a tenement between First and Second Avenue. There were five other children (four girls and a boy), and her father's salary as a driver for the Knickerbocker Ice Company was stretched thin. From the age of five, Keeler took dance lessons from a woman named Helen Guest . "We were very poor," said Keeler, "and I think she gave me the lessons for nothing." From age 11, she was enrolled in Jack Blue's Dance Studio, where one of her classmates was Patsy Kelly who would also appear with Keeler in No, No, Nanette. At 14, lying about her age, Keeler landed a role in the chorus of George M. Cohan's The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly (1923). Later she worked in the chorus line at a number of speakeasies, including the El Fey Club, where Texas Guinan was the hostess. While employed at The Silver Slipper, Keeler was signed for a featured role in the Broadway show Bye, Bye Bonnie (1927). Her tap number, "Tampico Tap," was favorably reviewed by the critics, as was her performance in the subsequent The Sidewalks of New York (1927), starring newcomer Bob Hope. The latter performance also caught the eye of producer Flo Ziegfeld, who offered her a part in his upcoming production of Whoopee, starring Eddie Cantor. Before rehearsals began, however, Keeler went off to the West Coast for a stage engagement and a part in a Fox short. It was there that she met singer-actor Al Jolson, who was so smitten with the pretty brunette that he followed her back to New York. The two were secretly married on September 21, 1928, and after a brief honeymoon, Keeler joined the cast of Whoopie, only to leave during the out-of-town tryout. A year later, billed as Ruby Keeler Jolson, she appeared in the George Gershwin revue Show Girl (1929), but left the cast after four weeks to join her husband in California.

In 1933, Keeler launched her film career at Warner Bros., as the ingenue in the backstage musical 42nd Street, co-starring established star Dick Powell and featuring the choreography of Busby Berkeley, whose lavish, geometrically patterned dance routines (often filmed from overhead) would soon become legendary. One film critic later described a Berkeley routine as "kaleidoscopic patterns of female flesh, dissolving into artichokes, exploding stars, snowflakes, and the expanding leaves of water lilies." Keeler's film debut was such a success that Warner Bros. immediately recast her with Powell in Gold Diggers of 1933. A star after only two pictures, Keeler could not have cared less. "I had no ambition and being a movie star truly didn't interest me," she said later. "You've got to have the drive. I never did. I always felt there was more to life than show biz. The idea of an early retirement appealed to me no end."

In spite of her ambivalence, Keeler honored her contract, Her third film with Powell, Footlight Parade (1933), which also starred James Cagney, contained one of Berkeley's most spectacular numbers, an aqua-ballet to "By a Waterfall" for which Keeler had to learn to swim. The film also had its subtler moments, among them a memorable dance with Cagney and Keeler to "Shanghai Lil." Keeler's fourth and fifth films with Powell were less successful. In Dames (1934), she had only one number, and in Flirtation Walk (1934), she did not dance at all. Abandoning co-star Powell temporarily, Keeler made one movie with her husband Al Jolson, Go into Your Dance (1935), in which she danced in two of the numbers Jolson sang: "Latin from Manhattan" and "A Quarter to Nine." Keeler was back with Powell for Shipmates Forever (1935) and Colleen (1936), both unsuccessful. "My screen musicals didn't get better, they merely got bigger," she said. Keeler did one more movie for Warner Bros., Ready, Willing and Able (1937), before leaving because of a quarrel Jolson had with the front office. Signing with RKO, she made one cheery programmer, Mother Carey's Chickens (1938), about a widow and her daughters who run a boarding house, based on a play by Rachel Crothers and Kate Douglas Wiggin .

In the meantime, Keeler's marriage was failing, and in 1939, she filed for divorce, alleging that Jolson never agreed with her about anything and ridiculed her in public. The actress, who gained custody of the couple's adopted son, had no further comment about her marriage, except to say, "It was a mistake—a long mistake." In 1946, when Sidney Skolsky produced the biopic The Jolson Story, Keeler would refuse to permit the use of her name. Her character, portrayed by Evelyn Keyes , was called Julie. Keeler made one more movie, Sweetheart of the Campus (1941), before her marriage to John Lowe, a successful real estate broker whom she met through friends. She promptly left Hollywood without a backward glance and took up residence in Newport Beach, California, where she raised her son and the four additional children she had with Lowe. She seldom made public appearances, aside from a few television shows and some "film festivals" in the 1960s that honored Busby Berkeley. In 1968, she appeared in a summer-stock production of Bell, Book and Candle, and in 1970, she made a cameo appearance, along with other

celebrities, in the movie The Phynx.

In 1970, a year after Lowe's death of a heart attack, Keeler agreed to play the lead in a Broadway revival of the 1925 musical No, No, Nanette, though she was initially terrified. After being told that her old friend Patsy Kelly would be in the cast and that 75-year-old Busby Berkeley would supervise the dancing, she was considerably more at ease. (Her son John was also assistant stage manager, and her sister Gertrude Keeler stepped in as her business manager.) At the opening performance in January 1971, Keeler's initial entrance down a long staircase was greeted by thunderous applause and her two dance numbers, "I Want to Be Happy" and "Take a Little One Step," were praised by audiences and critics alike. "[S]he dances like a trouper and wears indomitability shyly like a badge of service," wrote critic Clive Barnes. "She is just enormously likable." For her comeback appearance, Keeler received the George M. Cohan Award from the Catholic Actors Guild in May 1971, presented to the actress by actor Cyril Ritchard, president of the guild. In her acceptance speech, Keeler expressed gratitude for her life both on and off the stage. "For some reason the good Lord has chosen to bless me, because in addition to an awful lot of happiness, I've been given something no one else gets. In a sense, I've had two lives."