Tag: Vagabond Lover

Happy 115th Birthday, Rudy Vallée!

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Rudy Vallée was born Hubert Prior Vallée 115 years ago today in Island Pond, Vermont. He was a huge star as a young man, a true teen idol singing in a brand new style—the Elvis Presley (or perhaps the Justin Bieber) of his day, if you will. Here are 10 RV Did-You-Knows:

  • In addition to his vocal talents, Vallée played drums, clarinet and saxophone.

  • Vallée’s popular radio program of the 1920s and early ’30s was sponsored by Fleishmann’s Yeast (funny, but you just don’t see or hear that many yeast advertisements anymore).

  • Vallée, for all his popularity with the public, was said to be difficult to work with early in his career. He was short-tempered and ever spoiling for a fight, it is said.

  • As an orchestra leader, Vallée gave many popular singers their start, among them Alice Faye and Frances Langford.

  • Vallée wrote his first memoir in 1930, when he was all of 29.

  • His catch-phrase was, “Heigh-ho, everybody!”

  • The crooners of the 1920s and ’30s, of whom Vallée was among the most popular, were singing in a new, more intimate, even sexy style that simply wasn’t possible prior to the rise of the microphone. Rudy’s vocalizing may not strike the average listener today as especially sexy, but at the time, it was. If you don’t believe us, just ask him: He insisted on more than one occasion that “People called me the guy with the cock in his voice.” (No, we don’t really understand that, either.)

  • He played the romantic lead in several movies at the height of his popularity, but he later switched to more comedic roles, playing stuffy, pompous and sometimes oddball characters. (He’s very funny in Preston Sturges‘ The Palm Beach Story (1942), for example, but one almost wonders if he’s in on the joke.)

  • Vallée had a hit in the 1920s with The Maine Stein Song, the fight song for his alma mater, the University of Maine.

  • Vallée died in 1986 while watching the Statue of Liberty Centennial ceremonies on television.

Happy birthday, Rudy Vallée, wherever you may be!

Rudy Vallée

Fridays with Rudy: Vagabond Dreams Come True, Ch. 19

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In Chapter 19 of his 1930 memoir, Vagabond Dreams Come True, Rudy Vallée addresses the question that’s had us all on the edge of our seats since the first chapter of the book: What type of woman is his dream girl?

Chapter XIX

THIS DREAM GIRL NONSENSE

THEY say the man who dug the word halitosis out of the dictionary will probably be given a gold statue in the public square by the Listerine people, but the publicity man who seized upon that phrase, “girl of my vagabond dreams” from the song “Vagabond Lover,” and tied me up with a search for a dream girl merits a royal hanging for making me appear an individual in a never ending search for the perfect girl.
One ghost-written article entitled, “Wanted, the Girl of My Dreams,” did convey some of my ideas, but at best they were quite garbled—one part in particular that said I probably would not dare to meet any girl in her home and go to dinner because I feared that she would be ill at ease, feeling that she was with a musical celebrity. This resulted in hundreds of letters inviting me to home cooked meals and assuring me that the authors only wanted me for myself. I appreciate the sentiments of those who wrote me offering meals, and I wish I could have taken advantage of them, as I like nothing better than good, home cooking.
There was another article that again garbled my ideas, but throughout all this I have always felt that the reaction of the public would be, “Who cares what his ideas of a perfect girl are?” and that this reaction would be perfectly justified. After all, why should anyone be interested and for that reason I permitted the appearance of these two specific articles. I know that I am far from perfect and that is the reason that I do not expect a perfect mate. I have certain ideals and hopes but I am not hypercritical or too hard to satisfy. I do hope to find a girl whose ideas and views in the majority of cases are similar to mine, because it is my belief that only people suited to each other can be happy. It is illogical to expect that two people with conflicting temperaments and ideas can live happily in the same house unless one or the other is always willing to make a concession and give in.
While a brunette does quicken my heart more than a blonde, yet I have cared deeply for several blondes and still enjoy their company greatly. A woman’s physical charm is the thing that first attracts me, but unless she has many other wonderful qualities that my mother has, I am afraid we could never be happy. I love an industrious woman, one who enjoys housework, taking care of a thousand and one household things, and likes to cook. I hope to be able to save her from drudgery but if it should become necessary for her to do these things I would want to feel that she loved me enough to accept whatever her lot might have become. That phrase in the wedding ceremony expresses it best of all, “For better or worse.” I would like to feel that were every misfortune conceivable to come upon me, the girl I loved would still stay by me and would be loyal through whatever calamity befell me.
That, I believe, is the real thing. In fact, my conception of love is an indefinable something that cannot be measured, estimated or analyzed. The minute you are able to point out in concrete, physical terms the thing that attracts you to a person, then I say it is not that indefinable something we call love, because if it is something tangible that can be described or named, then the minute it is lost, love ceases; but real love continues long after beauty disappears, when disfigurement or even dismemberment occurs. Love continues under the most horrible conditions and the one who loves will never be able to explain really why.
I do expect and want it to be natural that the girl says she loves me should keep a certain warmth and sweetness for me alone. The woman who gushes and throws herself with abandon into the arms of any man she dances with, disproves for me the statement that she loves me. There is a difference between courtesy and discourtesy, and I expect her to show other people courtesy at all times but not that extreme warmth that should be mine alone.

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