My Time is Your Time

The Story of Rudy Vallee

Rudy Vallee, Gil McKean

• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781789128451
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Do you remember the Maine-Stein Song, that is? And did you ever own a racoon coat or wish you did? Or ride in a rumble seat, or date Betty Co-ed, or listen to a tenor saxophone tell you sweetly and tinnily on an old record that MY TIME IS YOUR TIME?If you remember—and who doesn't—then you remember Rude Vallee. And if you know what's new and big on Broadway this season, then you know that Rudy Vallee is still a hit. Vallee tells all in this charming warm-hearted and nostalgic memoir of his long and happy life. Born in a small town in Vermont, he travelled far and is one of the men who truly made a substantial contribution to cultural history of his own era.That era is not ended. The beloved idol of the 20's is still very much in the limelight, still winning hearts with his music.MY TIME IS YOUR TIME tells of good and bad times; the hazards and heartbreaks of being a popular band leader; and of the hard road at the top.This is personal experience that we all shared, made intimate and valuable by the recreation of the past we had together, the present we're enjoying, and the future we hope for. Rudy Vallee's story of his life is courageous, humorous, and often surprising in its insights into the times that were ours.

 

CHAPTER I—The Two Januarys

“I’ll Get By”

WELL NOW, GENTLE READER, WHERE TO start? Or, for that matter, why to start! Who am I to presume to pen my memoirs—but, then, who is anybody to pen et cetera. Look, gentle reader, I’ve had a few kicks along the way, during a pretty wild segment of our recorded (sic!) time and maybe you’d like to savor them in retrospect with me. If so, I welcome you one and all. If not, stop reading for nothing right now!

If you are straight and still with me let’s take a quick glance at the galloping events that made up the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and twenty-eight. From the vantage (vantage!) point of this here and now post-nuclear day, things back then might look a bit strange but, take my word for it—that time, in its own sweet way, was kicks. For instance and to wit:

That January two men, one a Britisher and one who was German, were found guilty in London of being Russian spies. They received sentences of ten years.

There was trouble in one of Great Britain’s African protectorates and as a result some 250,000 Negro slaves were freed by fiat.

High U.S. officials were heading south for an important, full-dress Pan-American conference.

A Senate committee was investigating the conduct of a high government official in accepting sizable gifts from vested interests.

The Communists were said to have massacred thousands of men, women and children in the Kwangtung province of China.

Does that sound like fairly recent history? The more things change the more they seem to stay the same!

It was a month like all months, full of both achievement and tragedy. While Colonel Charles Lindbergh was creating enormous good will on a flying trip through Central America, Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray were put to death in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison. A charming bit of medical naïveté may be noted in the fact that the Stated surgeon declared that an autopsy had revealed that the brains of the electrocuted duo were normal.

Incidentally, people were then being exposed to an unusually fine group of popular songs, some of which are still in vogue to this day. Tunes such as “Let’s Do It,” “Diane,” “Honey,” “Lover Come Back to Me,” “Sweet Sue,” “When You’re Smiling” were, as the saying goes, on everybody’s lips. There were a few “pops” of a novel nature like “You’re the Cream in My Coffee,” “Diga Diga Doo,” “Button Up Your Overcoat,” and a weird one called simply “C-o-n-s-t-a-n-t-i-n-o-p-l-e”! The song-hungry public heard these in many ways: in vaudeville, in dance halls and cabarets, in nickelodeons, and a precious few hovered at home over a little contraption called a “crystal set” with their earphones on, riding the radio waves.

“Look, Ma! When the weather’s right, I can get Cincinnati!”

I didn’t know it at the time but ‘28 was going to be very good to me. Fantastic breaks were just around the corner and to make it as an entertainer you need them badly. This is another not-so-secret ingredient of success.

So there I was, a young-punk saxophonist from Maine, via Yale, knocking at the doors of New York booking offices such as Meyer Davis and Ben Bernie, trying to break into what appeared to me as the big time. You know the old chestnut about the hick who got the roof of his mouth blistered from looking up at the skyscrapers. I was just about that impressed and just about that hicky when confronted by the stone-and-steel mountain ranges of Manhattan.

I really must have made quite a strange picture in those days—a picture that John Held, Jr. might have drawn for College Humor. The costume consisted mainly of a derby worn with just the right tilt, a flowing scarf, a beautiful raccoon coat; at the same time, I was laden with a baritone sax, an alto sax, and a clarinet, all in separate cases, plus a canvas bag containing the parts which could be assembled into a “pipe-stand” to support the baritone so that I could play it standing up.

The previous month, December, 1927, I had begun to get three or four dates a week with various bands. We played coming-out parties, holiday dances, any sort of function which needed dance music. I was living in Morristown, New Jersey, mainly because I was in the midst of a romance with a gorgeous Swedish girl. It must have been true love because, to be near her, I was prepared to brave the horrors of commuting to New York or wherever the job might take me.

Most of the engagements I got as a reed-playing performer had come through the Ben Bernie office which was run by Ben’s brother Herman. I had also played one dance date with a Vincent Lopez unit as well. Bernie, Lopez, George Olson, and Paul Whiteman as well as Meyer Davis were what you might call orchestral cartels; that is, using their names as prestige, they would book a number of orchestras under their own name but would charge an additional sum actually to appear and direct the so-called “combination.” Meyer Davis still runs such a business and does so most successfully. I suppose you might call it “ghost-conducting”!

Enter Bert Lown, a sort of small-time Meyer Davis, a man who was to have a profound effect on my career. I got an offer from him to front my own band at an exclusive new location which had just opened—The Heigh-Ho Club! From this came my perennial salutation, “Heigh-ho, everybody.”

In order to take the Heigh-Ho Club job, it was necessary for me to get a release from the Bernie office for the three engagements I still had to play for them. The Bernies graciously consented.

The last date I played for them is one I shall never forget, not only for what it was at the time but what it came to mean in relation to a similar event that took place a year later.

Picture this—there I was, a down-east bumpkin (I considered myself pretty sophisticated by this time; after all, I’d been in the Big Town several months now!) engaged to play in the band providing music for the Jewish Theatrical Guild banquet. It so happened that ten of the bandsmen came from the Bernie office and ten from the Whiteman office. I was dazzled by the big names: much brass—generals, admirals, captains of industry and His Honor, Mayor Jimmy Walker. George Jessel, the nonpareil, was toastmaster. Lou Holtz was master of ceremonies; Vincent Lopez performed on piano; Van and Schenk came over from the Palace with their great routines—then followed star turns as the “names” of the entertainment world made their appearances. Had this not been a benefit, the talent cost might have been estimated conservatively at well over one hundred thousand dollars. And there I was, playing on a saxophone, earning a few bucks a night, not even close enough to bask in reflected glory.

One year later I was asked to appear with my band at the same affair and Mayor Walker asked me to permit him to introduce me to the gathering, since he had become a fan of mine! When I stepped out on the stage after his introduction, the entire audience—the brass as well as big-name entertainers—rose to its feet amid a storm of applause.

Of all the great thrills that have come to me in the course of my career, I think that evening probably stands out as the most dramatic and poignant. I was as close to tears that night as I will ever be.

In one short year I found myself taking a terrific stride on my way to the Big Time. It was due to two things: working like a neurotic beaver with too many engagements, and that strange new gadget called radio!

CHAPTER II—Down-East in the Good Ol’ Days

“Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie”

IT WAS 1905 AND I WAS STUCK WITH THE number four. I was four years of age and I had been in a coma for four days. I guess I was trying to make four the hard way. They thought I was going to die. I will never forget until the day I do die the candles around my bedside, the hovering nuns, and the priest giving me the last sacraments. Possessed of an insatiable sweet tooth, I had indulged in too many of the one-cent prize packages that abounded in that day and age and the adulterated candy contained therein had laid me low. I was dying—I knew it and they knew it. And yet, somehow, I rallied and until the day I pass on for real I will remember with love what my Dad did for me. He persuaded the Catholic Convent Boys’ Band, some thirty strong, to parade by my window which was well out of their normal line of march. It was on the first Sunday afternoon that I was strong enough to crawl to the window to watch them. Dad knew it was a maneuver that would cheer me up and hasten my recovery.

Even then, Dad must have known (although he never spoke of it) about my passion for music and anything pertaining to a band or orchestra. Heaven only knows how many sodas and ice creams he must have given to this little Catholic band to persuade them to deviate from their normal line of march. Suffice to say that the thrill and joy that I experienced as I peeked over the window sill in my bedroom and saw those green-coated boy musicians parade by, has never left me.

What a character my father was! I have met in my time more than my share of idiosyncratic human beings, but Dad was, as the saying has it, the most unforgettable character I’ve ever known.

I can see him now with his twinkling blue eyes set in a round, chubby, red face—the same oft-caricatured eyes that I have, with the heavy-folded lids slanting sharply down at the outer edges—looking for all the world like a fat little French priest. He would saunter down the streets of our little country town, his left leg slightly bowed out, his Homburg perched a bit aslant, his cane swinging with just the right jauntiness, his spats setting off his gleaming shoes, a dark brown cigar with a long white ash in his hand, the whole outfit culminating in a large, flowing black tie fashioned into a large bow such as you might put on a prize cat! Even now as I watch a newsreel of Winston Churchill I somehow see my father.

Ah, those were the days! My flash-backs show me mental film-clips of Hubert Prior Vallee (that’s what my parents had christened me) swinging with childish glee over the suspension bridge that spanned the river in Rumford Falls, Maine, or watching for hours the spectacular rush of water through the lumber flume that had been erected at the side of this same river, down which coursed the logs which lumbermen had slashed out of the forests far above. Occasionally to our horror down would tumble a hapless lumberman, his wildly decorated shirt gleaming in the sunlight.

Then there was a night, a night just foggy enough to make it a really mysterious adventure for a youngster, when we packed up and boarded a stagecoach for the small city of Westbrook in the great state of Maine. The moon backed in and out among the clouds and I felt like a hero right out of Treasure Island. The driver wore a wide-brimmed hat, needed a shave, and I was certain he would deliver the whole family into a pirates’ camp before morning. However, I was not the least bit worried as I knew I could outwit any pirate living and see to our escape.

“I just hope we haven’t left anything,” my mother said worriedly. “Charles, did you put in the box full of the kitchen utensils?”

“Yes, dear. I put in the box with the utensils. And the box from our bedroom. And the children’s toy box, et cetera. I put in everything you packed so don’t worry. Up you go now, Kathleen. And now up you go, Hubert.”

It so happened that I was not to have a chance to outwit the pirates. The stagecoach driver was just that and nothing more. In the beaming midday sun he somehow no longer looked like a pirate as he deposited my Mom and Dad, sister Kathleen and me in front of the two-story house that was to be the Vallee “estate” for the next twenty years or so.

That first night in our home, since our meager furniture had not arrived on the wagon-train, we slept on mattresses placed on the floor. When the last lamp was turned off, the world was as dark and eerie as the bowels of hell itself. Certainly the huge attic was infested with ghosts, bats, and other hideous monsters. I could handle pirates and other human beings but, as a simple matter of self-preservation, I spent the night sweltering with my head underneath the covers. Next morning I was surprised to see no trace of monsters and with a sigh of relief I looked out from my second-story window into the streets of my new homeland.

But school was to start all too soon and before I knew it my mother was sprucing me up and plastering down my unruly hair in preparation.

That first day at a new school where you don’t know anybody, where even your sister is welcome as just somebody to say hello to! It’s hell when you see the other children in groups, in their own little cliques, cronying up and looking at you quizzically. You feel as if you’d like to dig a hole and hide and never come up.

“Now, Hubert,” my mother had said that morning. “First impressions are so important. Particularly with teachers. And remember, this isn’t Rumford! It’s Westbrook, a much larger town, and you’ve got to be on your toes. Oh, dear, I hope everything goes well at school!” She made one more desperate swipe with the brush at one of my curly cowlicks.

“Listen, Mother. Hubert will be all right, so stop fretting,” my father said calmly. This always maddened my mother. Dad rarely got in an uproar about anything and, except for occasional brief temperamental fireworks, was always serenity itself. Mother was just the opposite, constantly in a stew, a real worrier. It always irritated her that Dad never seemed to have a really serious care in the world.

Naturally, sooner or later I had a fight with one of the kids at school—I even recall his name—Dibbie Dow! As our classmates urged us on we had a real knockdown brawl but I can’t remember exactly why. I am glad to report I emerged victorious, as they say at Madison Square Garden. It was the only real fight I ever had in my life, false historians and newspaper reporters to the contrary. At least it’s the only one I ever really won. When I got home my clothes wer...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• CHAPTER I-The Two Januarys
• CHAPTER II-Down-East in the Good Ol’ Days
• CHAPTER III-Saxophobia
• CHAPTER IV-Yale University “Part One”
• CHAPTER V-The London Year and Yale “Part Two”
• CHAPTER VI-To New York and the Heigh-Ho Club
• CHAPTER VII-Three Cheers for Radio-Two Cheers for Hollywood
• CHAPTER VIII-The Fleischmann Hour Is Born
• CHAPTER IX-Fay Webb and All That Jazz
• CHAPTER X-My Life and Times with George White’s Scandals
• CHAPTER XI-Songs Can Be Dangerous
• CHAPTER XII-Hand Me Down My Crystal Ball
• CHAPTER XIII-Home Is Where You Hang Your Hat
• CHAPTER XIV-London Revisited
• CHAPTER XV-From One Sponsor to Another-More Movies
• CHAPTER XVI-The Coast Guard Days in World War II
• CHAPTER XVII-The “Drene” Show for Procter and Gamble
• CHAPTER XVIII-Eleanor
• CHAPTER XIX-Into the Hecklers’ Paradise-Night Clubs-Play-Acting-TV
• CHAPTER XX-How to Succeed in Show Business by Really Trying
• CHAPTER XXI-Life Begins at Sixty!
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER