73 Facts About Ruth Etting

Ruth Etting was an American singer and actress during the 1920s and 1930s, who had over 60 hit recordings and worked in stage, radio, and film.

Ruth Etting, who enjoyed singing in school and church, never took any formal singing lessons.

Ruth Etting quickly became a featured vocalist at the club.

Ruth Etting was then managed by Moe Snyder, whom she married in 1922.

Snyder was known for being very protective of Ruth Etting, keeping her out of trouble in the dangerous city and referring to her as "the little lady", along with other affectionate names.

Ruth Etting made arrangements for Etting's recording and film contracts as well as her personal and radio appearances.

Ruth Etting became nationally known when she appeared in Flo Ziegfeld's Follies of 1927.

Ruth Etting intended to retire from performing in 1935, but that did not happen until after a messy divorce from Snyder in 1937.

Harry Myrl Alderman, Ruth Etting's pianist, was separated from his wife when he and Ruth Etting began a relationship.

Ruth Etting was born on November 23,1896, in David City, Nebraska, to Alfred Etting, a banker, and Winifred Etting.

Ruth Etting's mother died when she was five years old, while she and Ruth were travelling west.

Ruth Etting then lived with her paternal grandparents, George and Hannah Etting.

Ruth Etting's father remarried and moved away from David City and was no longer a part of his daughter's life.

Ruth Etting was interested in drawing at an early age; she drew and sketched anywhere she was able.

Ruth Etting's grandparents were asked to buy the textbooks she had used at the end of a school term because Etting had filled them with her drawings.

Ruth Etting left David City at the age of sixteen to attend art school in Chicago.

Ruth Etting gained a job designing costumes at the Marigold Gardens nightclub, which led to employment singing and dancing in the chorus.

Ruth Etting gave up art school soon after beginning to work at Marigold Gardens.

Ruth Etting said that she had patterned her song styling after Marion Harris, but created her own unique style by alternating tempos and by varying some notes and phrases.

Ruth Etting quickly changed into the costume and scanned the music arrangements; the performer was male, so Etting tried to adjust by singing in a lower register.

The club enjoyed her performance exceedingly, and Ruth Etting became a featured vocalist at the nightclub.

Ruth Etting was hired as one of the lead singers for a new show to be presented at Fred Mann's Million Dollar Rainbo Room in Chicago's Rainbo Gardens.

Ruth Etting met gangster Martin "Moe the Gimp" Snyder in 1922, when she was performing at the Marigold Gardens in Chicago.

Ruth Etting described herself as a young, naive girl when she arrived; and due to her inexperience in the ways of the big city, she became reliant on Snyder after their meeting.

Snyder, who divorced his first wife to marry Ruth Etting, was well acquainted with Chicago's nightclubs and the entertainers who worked in them; he once served as a bodyguard to Al Jolson.

Snyder used his political connections to gain bookings for Ruth Etting, who was called "Miss City Hall" because of Snyder's influence in Chicago.

Ruth Etting married Snyder on July 17,1922, in Crown Point, Indiana.

The couple moved to New York in 1927, where Ruth Etting made her Broadway debut in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1927.

Ruth Etting nervously prepared to sing for Ziegfeld at the audition.

Ruth Etting was hired on that basis because Ziegfeld did not hire women with big ankles.

Ruth Etting was not originally signed to perform in Simple Simon; she became part of the cast at the last minute when vocalist Lee Morse was too intoxicated to perform.

Ziegfeld asked Ruth Etting to replace Morse; she hurried to Boston, where the show was being tried out prior to Broadway.

When Ruth Etting arrived, songwriters Rodgers and Hart discovered that the song "Ten Cents a Dance" was not written for Ruth Etting's voice range.

Ruth Etting had recorded the song in 1928, but Etting's new version of it was impressive enough to earn her a Vitaphone contract to make film shorts.

In Hollywood, Ruth Etting made a long series of movie shorts between 1929 and 1936, and three feature movies in 1933 and 1934.

Ruth Etting described the short films as either having a simple plot to allow for her to sing two songs or with no plot at all.

The idea was to have Ruth Etting sing at least two songs in the film.

Ruth Etting believed she might have had more success in full-length films if she had been given some acting lessons.

Ruth Etting's perception was that the studios viewed her only as a vocalist.

Ruth Etting quit the show because she and the other performers had not been paid.

Ruth Etting was first heard on radio station WLS while she was living in Chicago.

Ruth Etting's appearance drew so much fan mail the station signed her to a year's contract for twice weekly performances.

Ruth Etting saved some of her paycheck each week, regardless of the amount she was making at the time.

Ruth Etting's friends said she invested in California real estate rather than the stock market.

Ruth Etting, who made many of her own clothes, did her own housekeeping and lived frugally, initially announced her retirement in 1935.

Snyder's arguing and fighting at venues where Ruth Etting was employed caused her to be passed by for jobs in the United States.

Ruth Etting divorced Moe Snyder on the grounds of cruelty and abandonment on November 30,1937.

Ruth Etting gave her ex-husband half of her earnings at the time, $50,000, some securities and a half interest in a home in Beverly Hills, California.

Ruth Etting deducted the gambling debts of Snyder she had paid and the costs she had paid for a home for Snyder's mother.

Ruth Etting fell in love with her pianist, Myrl Alderman, who was separated from his wife.

In January 1938, she began receiving threatening telephone calls from Snyder, who initially claimed Ruth Etting withheld assets from him when the divorce settlement was made.

Ruth Etting called again that evening; this time Etting took the call with her cousin, Arthur Etting, listening on an extension.

Ruth Etting requested police protection after the telephone call and arranged for private protection.

Apparently believing the danger was over when Snyder did not appear soon after his telephone call, Ruth Etting released her bodyguards a few days later.

Edith, Snyder's daughter by a previous marriage, worked for Ruth Etting and remained living with her after the divorce.

Ruth Etting claimed he was drunk when he made the telephone threats to Etting in January 1938, saying that at the time his intentions were to kill both his ex-wife and himself.

Ruth Etting said that the only gun in the home belonged to her, and after the shooting of Alderman, she was able to go into her bedroom and get it.

Ruth Etting publicly invited Alma Alderman to visit her husband in the hospital, in an effort to see if the couple could reconcile.

Ruth Etting testified that she was not married to Alderman.

Ruth Etting testified that she agreed with her ex-husband's statement to police that Snyder was either drunk or out of his mind when he threatened her by phone.

Snyder's attorney initially tried to prevent Ruth Etting from testifying against Snyder with a charge that the divorce she obtained in Illinois was invalid because she was a resident of California at that time.

Ruth Etting married Alderman, who was almost a decade her junior, on December 14,1938, in Las Vegas, during Moe Snyder's trial for attempted murder.

Ruth Etting, who had retired from performing prior to the shooting and subsequent trials, briefly had a radio show on WHN in 1947.

Ruth Etting accepted an engagement at New York's Copacabana in March 1947.

Ruth Etting traveled alone to New York and during a newspaper interview, was asked if she had ever seen Moe Snyder again.

Ruth Etting died in Colorado Springs in 1978, at age 81.

Ruth Etting was survived by a stepson, John Alderman, and four grandchildren.

Ruth Etting's life was the basis for the fictionalized film, Love Me or Leave Me, which starred Doris Day, James Cagney and Cameron Mitchell.

Ruth Etting expressed sadness that "the real highlight of my life", her marriage to Alderman, was omitted from the film.

Shortly before her death, Ruth Etting said she thought the screen portrayal of her was too tough and that Jane Powell would have been a better choice for the lead.

Ruth Etting has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her work in films, located on the north side of the 6500 block of Hollywood Boulevard.

Ruth Etting signed with Brunswick and remained there until May 1934, when she re-signed with Columbia through July 1935.

Ruth Etting returned to the US and signed with Decca in December 1936 and recorded until April 1937, when she basically retired from recording.