Nanette Fabray

Nanette Fabray

Fabray in 1950
Born Ruby Bernadette Nanette Fabares
(1920-10-27) October 27, 1920
San Diego, California, U.S.
Occupation Actress
Years active 1924–2007
Spouse(s) David Tebet (1947–1951)
Ranald MacDougall (1957–1973; his death)

Nanette Fabray (born October 27, 1920) is an American actress, dancer and singer. She began her career performing in vaudeville as a child and became a musical theatre actress during the 1940s and 1950s, winning a Tony Award in 1949 for her performance in Love Life. In the mid-1950s, she served as Sid Caesar's comedic partner on Caesar's Hour, for which she won three Emmy Awards. From 1979 to 1984, she appeared as Grandma Katherine Romano on One Day at a Time.

Fabray overcame a significant hearing impairment and has been a long-time advocate for the rights of the deaf and hard of hearing. Her honors representing the handicapped include the President's Distinguished Service Award and the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award.

Early life, education, and work as a child actor

Fabray was born Ruby Bernadette Nanette Fabares in San Diego, California, to Raul Bernard Fabares, a train conductor, and Lily Agnes McGovern, a housewife. The family resided in Los Angeles and Fabray's mother was instrumental in getting her daughter involved in show business as a child. At a young age, she studied tap dancing with, among others, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. She made her professional stage debut as "Miss New Years Eve 1923" at the Million Dollar Theater at the age of three. She spent much of her childhood appearing in vaudeville productions as a dancer and singer. She appeared with stars such as Ben Turpin.

Fabray's parents divorced when she was nine, but continued living together for financial reasons. During the Great Depression, her mother turned their home into a boarding house, which Fabray and her siblings helped run. In her early teenage years, Fabray attended the Max Reinhardt School of the Theatre on a scholarship. She then attended Hollywood High School, where she graduated in 1939. She entered Los Angeles Junior College in the fall of 1939, but withdrew a few months later. She had always had difficulty in school due to an undiagnosed hearing impairment, which made learning difficult. She eventually was diagnosed with a hearing loss in her 20s after an acting teacher encouraged her to get her hearing tested. Fabray said of the experience, "It was a revelation to me. All these years I had thought I was stupid, but in reality I just had a hearing problem."

Career as a musical theatre actress

At the age of 19, Fabray made her feature film debut as one of Bette Davis's ladies-in-waiting in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). She appeared in two additional motion pictures that year for Warner Brothers, The Monroe Doctrine and A Child Is Born, but failed to gain a long-term studio contract. She next appeared in the stage production Meet the People in Los Angeles in 1940, which then toured the United States in 1940-1941. In the show, she sang the opera aria "Caro nome" from Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto while tap dancing. During the show's New York run, Fabray was invited to perform the "Caro nome" number for a benefit at Madison Square Garden with Eleanor Roosevelt as the main speaker. Ed Sullivan was the Master of Ceremonies for the event and the famed host, reading a cue card, mispronounced her name as "Nanette Fa-bare-ass." After this embarrassing faux pas, the actress changed the spelling of her name from Fabares to Fabray.[1]

Artur Rodziński, conductor of the New York Philharmonic, saw Fabray's performance in Meet the People and offered to sponsor operatic vocal training for her at the Juilliard School. She studied opera at Juilliard during the latter half of 1941 while performing in her first Broadway musical, Cole Porter's Let's Face It!, with Danny Kaye and Eve Arden. She decided that she preferred musical theatre over opera and withdrew from the school after five months. She became a successful musical theatre actress in New York during the 1940s and early 1950s, starring in such productions as By Jupiter (1942), My Dear Public (1943), Jackpot (1944), Bloomer Girl (1946), High Button Shoes (1947), Arms and the Girl (1950), and Make a Wish (1951). In 1949, she won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Susan Cooper in the Kurt Weill/Alan Jay Lerner musical Love Life. She received a Tony nomination for her role as Nell Henderson in 1963 for Mr. President 1963 after an eleven-year absence from the New York stage.[1] Fabray continued to tour in musicals for many years, appearing in such shows as Wonderful Town and No No Nanette.

Television and film

Fabray in 1957

In the mid-1940s, Fabray worked regularly for David Sarnoff and NBC on a variety of programs in the Los Angeles area. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, she made her first high-profile national television appearances performing on a number of variety programs such as The Ed Sullivan Show, Texaco Star Theater, and The Arthur Murray Party.

She also appeared on Your Show of Shows as a guest star opposite Sid Caesar. She appeared as a regular on Caesar's Hour from 1954 to 1956, winning three Emmys. Fabray left the show after a misunderstanding when her business manager, unbeknownst to her, made unreasonable demands for her third season contract. Fabray and Caesar did not reconcile until years later.

Fabray appeared as the mother of the main character on television series such as One Day at a Time, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Coach, where she played mother to real-life niece Shelley Fabares. She also made appearances on The Carol Burnett Show, Burke's Law, Love, American Style, Maude, The Love Boat, What's My Line?, and Murder, She Wrote. Her brief, eponymously titled 1961 comedy series was cancelled after 13 episodes. On the PBS program Pioneers of Television: Sitcoms, Mary Tyler Moore credited Fabray with inspiring her trademark comedic crying technique.

In 1953, Fabray played her most well-known screen role as a Betty Comden-like playwright in MGM's The Band Wagon with Fred Astaire and Jack Buchanan. The film featured Fabray, Astaire, and Buchanan performing the classic musical number "Triplets", which was included in That's Entertainment, Part II. Additional film credits include The Subterraneans (1960), The Happy Ending (1969), Harper Valley PTA (1978), Amy (1981), and Teresa's Tattoo (1994).

Fabray's most recent work was in 2007, when she appeared in The Damsel Dialogues, an original revue by composer Dick DeBenedictis, with direction/choreography by Miriam Nelson. The show, which was performed at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks, California, focused on women's issues with life, love, loss, and the workplace.

Personal life

Fabray's first husband, David Tebet, was a vice president of NBC. Her second husband was screenwriter Ranald MacDougall, who numbered Mildred Pierce and Cleopatra among his credits, and who, in the early 1970s, served as president of the Writers Guild of America. The couple was married from 1957 until his death in 1973. They had one child.

She is a resident of Pacific Palisades, California; and is the aunt of singer/actress Shelley Fabares. Her niece's 1984 wedding to actor Mike Farrell was at her home.[2]

In 2001, she wrote to advice columnist Dear Abby, to decry the loud background music played on television programs.[3]

Hollywood Walk of Fame

Nanette Fabray has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Partial filmography

Film

Television

Stage work

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Nanette Fabray.
  1. 1 2 "Archive of American Television: Interview with Nanette Fabray", August 12, 2004, Jennifer Howard
  2. ↑ Sanz, Cynthia (April 15, 1991). "Shelley Fabares Fell for a Former M*a*s*h-Er, Mike Farrell". People. Retrieved 24 February 2016.
  3. ↑ Letter to Dear Abby.
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