Mary Small was a singing personality during the Golden Age of Radio and hosted her own broadcasts for 14 consecutive years across all major networks.
20 Facts About Mary Small
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Mary Small headlined or opened at "presentation houses" from the 1930s through the 1950s including the Paramount Theater, Madison Square Garden, the London Palladium, the Copacabana with Sammy Davis Jr.
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Mary Small was the first singer to be widely promoted as The Little Girl With The Big Voice, a moniker likely adopted by her first manager Ed Wolfe that was marketed in the Fleischer Brothers' Love Thy Neighbor, distributed by Paramount Pictures in 1934.
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Mary Small was married for a time to the composer Vic Mizzy with whom she had a widely publicized divorce.
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Mary Small's life is the subject of a documentary by Rafael Moscatel.
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Mary Small's father was a local vaudevillian and her mother a homemaker.
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Mary Small first performed on Baltimore radio station WBAL at the age of six or seven and at nine won a radio contest hosted by Gus Edwards.
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Mary Small was successful on radio throughout the 1930s and 1940s and either hosted or was featured on a number of programs.
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Mary Small worked with the biggest bands and orchestras of the day including Tommy Dorsey, Ray Bloch, Glenn Miller and with stars like Roy Rogers, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Jackie Gleason and Frank Sinatra.
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Mary Small had a number of announcers for her programs over the years including Bud Collyer and Milton Cross who was best known as the voice of the Metropolitan Opera for 43 years.
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Mary Small was interviewed by David Siegel on September 24,1999, for his book Remembering Radio: An Oral History of Old Time Radio and quoted as saying:.
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Mary Small was billed as the voice that is thrilling millions.
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Mary Small's ballads were swapped out for patriotic songs and she worked with the Treasury Department participating in US bond rallies where she shared the stage doing spots with actors like Jimmy Stewart.
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Mary Small joined Pearl Hamilton, one of The Three X Sisters, to tour with the USO in 1943 or 1944 and sang the song Smile, America, Smile.
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In 1942, at the March of Dimes event celebrating Franklin Roosevelt's 60th birthday, Mary Small performed her own song, "Thank you, Mr President," backed by the Glenn Miller orchestra and broadcast live from the Waldorf Astoria.
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Mary Small performed as a headliner and recorded consistently from 1934 through the 1950s.
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Mary Small's image appears on dozens of sheet music titles.
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Mary Small expanded into dramatic theater playing the role of Lenny Bruce's mother in a play about his life.
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In 1930s Mary Small began performing at the Paramount Theater between films and newsreels to draw in bigger crowds and then as a solo act.
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In 1934, Max Fleischer hired Mary Small to appear in one of his community-sing "Bouncing Ball" cartoons, Love Thy Neighbor, filmed at his New York studio.