Betty Garrett
b. 23 May 1919, St. Joseph, Missouri, USA. After winning a scholarship to a New York theatre company, Garrett enjoyed some success on the stage. She was an accomplished dancer, working with the celebrated Martha Graham troupe, and she also sang in clubs and hotel lounges. She made her Broadway debut in 1942 in the revue Let Freedom Ring, and had supporting roles in other stage shows such as Something For The Boys, Jackpot, and Laffing Room Only. After starring in Call Me Mister (1946) in which she introduced Harold Rome's South America, Take It Away, she was signed to a film contract. In the late '40s she sang and danced with immense zest and vitality in popular movie musicals such as Big City, Words And Music, Take Me Out To The Ball Game, On the Town, and Neptune's Daughter. After retiring to have children she attempted a comeback but her husband, Larry Parks, who had starred in two bio-pics about Al Jolson, had been blacklisted for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and her career, too, was severely damaged. Later, Garrett and Parks developed a nightclub act and, later still, they worked in repertory theatres. She made one more film musical in the '50s, My Sister Eileen, but was reluctant to be parted from Parks and dropped out of that area of show business. She did appear on television, however, with roles in the long-running comedy All In The Family, and Laverne And Shirley (1976). In the '80s she toured with Sheree North and Gale Storm in the comedy Breaking Up The Act, and returned to Broadway in the short-lived stage adaptation of the hit film musical Meet Me In St. Louis. In 1990 her one-woman show, Betty Garrett And Other Songs, was acclaimed at the Ballroom in New York, and in the early '90s she presented her cabaret act, which includes Broadway and Hollwood songs old and new—plus a little Jacques Brel—at London's Pizza On The Park.