Benay Venuta

The exceedingly lovely and highly musical Benay Venuta was born on January 27, 1911, as Benvenuta Rose Crooke in San Francisco, California. Attending finishing school in Geneva, she subsequently dropped out and headed off to London.

Her career in show business began as a teenage dancer in 1925. Returning to the States a few years later, she made her stage debut in "The Big Parade" in 1928, with nightclubs and vaudeville also a vital part of her early experience. Following a role in the musical revue "Tip Toes" (1929), the flashy blonde performer appeared ready for bigger things. Her Broadway career began quite auspiciously when, a complete unknown at the time, she replaced the irrepressible Ethel Merman in Cole Porter's huge hit "Anything Goes" in 1935. They were big and boisterous shoes to fill but Benay filled them well and was a great success. She and Merman became lifelong friends as well.

With the die cast, Benay followed it with equally flashy roles in lesser Broadway musicals such as "Orchids Preferred" (1937), Kiss the Boys Goodbye" (1938), "By Jupiter" (1942), "Hazel Flagg" (1953), and "Copper and Brass" (1957). She maintained a steady income in between by touring and playing summer stock in a mixture of singing and straight-acting roles. Credits included "Dear Me, the Sky Is Falling," "Little Me," "A Little Night Music," "Bus Stop," "Gypsy," "Come Blow Your Horn," "Auntie Mame," "Light Up the Sky," "Carousel," "Pal Joey," "Come Back, Little Sheba" and "The Prisoner of Second Avenue."

In 1966, Benay performed in the revival of "Annie Get Your Gun" with good friend Merman at Lincoln Center playing the role of Dolly Tate. She had earlier played the same role in the MGM film version of Annie Get Your Gun (1950) with Betty Hutton in the Annie Oakley role. As for films, the slender-framed blonde made her debut in The Trail of '98 (1928) while still a teen, but appeared very erratically thereafter -- mostly in supports. Her better known movies include the "B" film noir programmers Repeat Performance (1947) and I, Jane Doe (1948), and the Fox musical Call Me Mister (1951) in which she joined stars Betty Grable, Danny Thomas and Dan Dailey in the song "Love Is Back in Business."

Dropping out of show business, she came back from time to time in the 1970s. Thrice married and divorced, Benay's last husband was character actor Fred Clark, but the couple split up in 1962. Benay had two children, Pat and Debbie, via her second marriage to film producer Armand Deutsch (I)'. Her highly artistic tendencies also included sculpting and commercial design. Suffering from lung cancer, Benay died at her home in Manhattan, New York City on September 1, 1995, at age 84.