Rosemary Lane of the singing Lane sisters (their actual birth name was
Mullican) got her start as a vocalist with bandleader
Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians.
Her career was somewhat overshadowed by that of her more famous sister,
Priscilla, who was also a member of that band and who would go on to
bigger and better things. Both Rosemary and Priscilla appeared in the
musical
Varsity Show (1937)which
featured the Waring orchestra and starred
Dick Powell.
With a Warner Brothers contract in hand, Rosemary starred (with another
one of her sisters, Lola) in
Hollywood Hotel (1937), again
with Dick Powell. While she did quite well, she and the rest of the
cast were seriously upstaged by
Busby Berkeley's sumptuous stage design
and by the
'king of swing'
Benny Goodman,
whose orchestra was featured in no less than eight musical numbers. She
then played second fiddle to Priscilla in a series of films featuring
three of the four Lane sisters (Leota was the fourth):
Four Daughters (1938),
Daughters Courageous (1939)
and
Four Wives (1939).
After that, Rosemary called it quits, commenting "that was the end of
it as far as I was concerned" ( New York Times, November 27 1974).
Rosemary Lane eschewed Hollywood for Broadway and enjoyed a successful
run as star of
George Abbott's
1941 musical comedy
'Best Foot Forward',
alongside
Nancy Walker
and
June Allyson. Her part, ironically, was
that of a sophisticated, but fading film star. After 1945, Rosemary
settled down in Pacific Palisades and worked for a while selling real
estate.
Sing Me a Song of Texas(1945)as Laurie Lang
Trocadero(1944)as Judy Edwards
Harvest Melody(1943)as Gilda Parker
All by Myself(1943)as Val Stevenson
Chatterbox(1943)as Carol Forrest
Time Out for Rhythm(1941)
Four Mothers(1941)
Screen Snapshots, Series 19, No. 1(1939)as Self
