Harry Richman
b. Harry Reichman, 10 August 1895, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Basically a nightclub entertainer, Richman was very popular during the '20s and '30s. A flamboyant character, with a debonair ‘man-about-town’ image, complete with top hat, or straw boater and cane, he had an uninhibited vocal style, often compared to Al Jolson. At the age of 12, together with a friend, he formed a musical act, Remington and Reichman, and appeared at the Casino Theatre, Chicago. When he was 18 he changed his name to Richman and played regular cafe engagements in San Francisco as a comedian, then appeared in vaudeville as a song and dance man, and as a pianist for headliners, the Dolly Sisters, Mae West and Nora Bayes. In 1922 he made his Broadway debut, with Bayes, in QUEEN O' HEARTS, which ran for only 39 performances. Much more successful was GEORGE WHITE'S SCANDALS of 1926, in which Richman introduced the songs Lucky Day and The Birth Of the Blues, the latter being one of his biggest hits. Richman also starred in the 1928 edition of the SCANDALS, in which he sang I'm On the Crest Of A Wave. His next Broadway show was in 1930 Lew Leslie's lavish INTERNATIONAL REVUE, was another comparative flop, despite the presence of England's Gertrude Lawrence, dance direction by Busby Berkeley, and Richman's renditions of two of Dorothy Fieldsand Jimmy McHugh's best songs, Exactly Like You and On The Sunny Side Of The Street. He introduced another all-time standard, Joseph McCarthyand Jimmy Monaco's You Made Me Love You, in the ZIEGFELD FOLLIES in 1931, which also co-starred Helen Morganand Ruth Etting, and a year later, in GEORGE WHITE'S MUSICAL HALL VARIETIES, his big numbers were I Love A Parade, and one of Herman Hupfield's select songs, Let's Put Out The Lights And Go To Sleep. Richman's last '30s Broadway musical was SAY WHEN, in 1934. 
From early in his career he had co-written songs and made hit recordings of some of them, including Walking My Baby Back Home, There's Danger In Your Eyes, Cherie, Singing A Vagabond Song, Miss Annabelle Lee, C'est Vous (It's You) and Muddy Water. As well as records and stage appearances, he was enormously popular during the '30s in cabaret and on radio. He also made a few films, including PUTTING ON THE RITZ (1930), THE MUSIC GOES ROUND (1936) and KICKING THE MOON AROUND (1938), which was made in England, and co-starred top bandleader, Ambrose And His Orchestra. Richman was very popular in the UK, playing the London Palladium, and other theatres, several times. During the '40s, he appeared in the revue, NEW PRIORITIES OF 1943, and continued to play clubs and theatres. By the late '40s he had become semi-retired, but emerged to give the occasional performance until the early '60s. He died on 3 November 1972 in Hollywood, California, USA. Always a high-living individual, it is said that, at the peak of his career, he drove along Broadway in his Rolls Royce, dispensing 10 dollar gold pieces to his admirers. He also owned a speak-easy establishment, Club Richman, in New York. In his leisure time he was an accomplished pilot. In 1935 he set the world altitude record for a single-engine amphibious plane, and a year later, with his partner Dick Merrill, created another record by flying from New York to the UK, and back again, in a single-engine plane. They reputedly packed the aircraft with 50,000 ping-pong balls as an aid to buoyancy in case they ditched in the sea. After all that, the title of Richman's autobiography, A HELL OF A LIFE, would seem to be a reasonable one.