Kathryn Grayson

By Jennie Watters

Katie Grayson and her friend scrambled over the fence at the St. Louis Municipal Opera Amphitheater to find the janitor. Earlier they had been practicing an aria from an RCA record at Katie’s home. Although the only person present at the theater in Forest Park at this time of the day was the fellow who was there mopping floors, the little girls imagined they were auditioning. After all, he got to hear opera singers perform for real all the time! They sang their little hearts out. “Bravo!” the janitor applauded when they were finished, “You’re as good as the singers who perform here on stage! Perhaps one day you’ll be singing for an audience of thousands.” The girls beamed, thanked him, then scampered away to learn another song. The next one would be even better! “We thought we were pretty hot stuff,” Grayson reminisced as an adult. “That is until we learned that the janitor was stone deaf!” she laughed.

“Katie” had been born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick on February 9, 1922. She came by her singing ability quite naturally, since her two older brothers and even her younger sister had four-octave ranges. “Sunday mornings, we all used to get together for a ‘sing-song.’ We might, for the time being, be living on potatoes, but we never sold the piano.” Stories of how Kathryn first started taking professional voice lessons vary. A 1941 issue of Hollywood magazine Screen Album claims: “School life and home-taught singing enlivened uneventful years until Kathryn was fifteen, when the finger of Fate pointed to Fame, via a holiday trip to Texas. An accident, in which Kathryn and her mother were seriously injured, detoured them for five months of medical care, after which Papa Hedrick decided to join a former partner’s real estate business in Hollywood…Arrived there, Mama Hedrick decided that her talented child should seriously study voice while enrolled in the Manual Arts High School.”

If the old movie magazines are to be believed, an MGM talent scout discovered Grayson at a music festival where she was performing. She was asked to audition before Mr. MGM himself, Louis B Mayer. For two or three hours, she sang songs by Deanna Durbin, Jeanette McDonald, and Grace Moore. She was offered a contract, but Kathryn had her doubts about stardom. “I was too plain. One glimpse in the glass at my turned-up nose, my awkward shaped face, convinced me that an audience would never look at and listen to me.” She only signed once Mayer promised that she wouldn’t have to appear onscreen until she was properly prepared. For a year before her first screen test, she was to take acting and singing lessons, put on a diet and trained in physical exercise. This, she was assured, would transform her into an ideal star. She agreed and her given name became “Kathryn Grayson.”

Mayer was as good as his word and Kathryn started a rigorous schedule that lasted for the year. Finally, the big day arrived. After doing some comedy bits, popular songs, and dramatic singing, Kathryn went to lunch. While she was eating Katherine Hepburn came running over, “I just saw your screen test, you are the greatest young actress I have ever seen,” she gushed, impulsively kissing her hand. At such praise, Kathryn rushed to the executive building, breathlessly hoping that she was half as good as the great Katherine Hepburn said she was. She nearly cried when she saw herself larger than life on the big screen. “I’m not pretty. I can’t act. I’m a failure,” she thought. She immediately went to L.B. Mayer’s office and said, “Mr. Mayer, you have been very kind and I want to thank you very much, but I can see I’m not the right person to be in the pictures.” Mr. Mayer tried to calm the young actress down and assured her that he’d heard nothing but positive feedback about her screen test. Her parents also urged her to persevere, telling her it wouldn’t be fair to quit now, after all the time and money the studio had invested. So she moved forward, six months later making her debut in Mickey Rooney’s movie “Andy Hardy’s Private Secretary” (in the part of his teenage secretary.)

Audiences loved the young coloratura soprano, whose voice, although occasionally a tad shrill, was strong, precise and angelic. One article described her as “fresh as a hyacinth and as sweet!” Fans did not realize that this sweetheart also had a tough streak. She rode a Harley-Davidson motorcycle to and from work, against the advice of studio executives. When Kathryn felt she needed to advocate for herself, she did. The Metropolitan Opera House was interested in giving her the leading role in Lucia di Lammermoor, but Louis B. Mayer told them she couldn’t do it, which infuriated Kathryn. “We had this tremendous row,” she said, “I loved the opera and wanted to do it desperately.” Mayer insisted that if she started this early in her career taking leading roles in operas, it would jeopardize her reputation as an actress. “Kathryn,” Mayer said, “you’re such a little rebel, I want you to go to a mountaintop and yell ‘Go to hell!’ and then I want you to listen to the echo coming back at you. I then want you to yell, ‘God bless you!’ and listen to that echo.” Mayer got his way…this time.

Even Mickey Rooney asked Louis B. Mayer for permission to do certain things, and he was known as the “box office king” from the late 30s to the early 40s. When Rooney married his first wife Ava Gardner, he paid his boss a special visit to get his blessing. Mayer considered himself the father of a large family, and he often treated his employees like his children. Kathryn Grayson by her own admission liked L.B Mayer, but she was not going to let him run her life. When she fell in love with divorcee John Shelton, she shocked everyone by running away to Las Vegas to elope! Her marriage to Shelton proved to be a tempestuous one which ended five years later after several separations and attempts to reconcile.

Kathryn had steady work at MGM, most notably Anchors Aweigh, a film that today is best remembered for the scene where Gene Kelly dances with the cartoon mouse (Jerry) from Tom and Jerry. SIXTEEN musical numbers are scattered throughout the two-and-a-half-hour runtime, much of it led by Spanish conductor and pianist Jose Iturbi. Although not a household name today, Iturbi was famous then and hoped to use his popularity to bring classical music to the masses. He and Kathryn were close, they would often go to dinner or concerts together as friends. Sadly, many serious musicians shunned him as soon as he got involved in Hollywood, accusing him of “prostituting his art” by appearing in movies. Kathryn stuck up for him saying, “If he was prostituting his art, then I’m grateful he did it…we gave the world some wonderful films!” 

Although her movies were fun to watch and financially successful, Kathryn Grayson realized that they were not going to be enduring classics. Friends would ask “Why can’t you do great stories?” and she wished she could but Mr. Mayer would say “The public likes you the way you are with the things you’re doing, you make them happy!” She argued that the public would be even happier if she was allowed to appear in a movie with a better-developed plot and characters. She always had to play the part of the sweet, likable ingenue, which went along with the carefully crafted reputation the studio had built for her. Even Life magazine called her 1945 film, Two Sisters from Boston, “a pleasantly silly little musical.” Grayson’s character is a barroom singer with aspirations for the opera stage and “cuter than a bug’s ear” sister June Allyson endeavors to keep her on the straight and narrow. Even though she had top billing and handled the role very well, she yearned to do more.

Not much had changed by 1947 when she married her second husband, radio singer Jonnie Johnston. On October 7, 1948, Kathryn gave birth to her only child, a daughter she named Patricia Kathryn Johnston (nicknamed “Patty Kate.”) It wasn’t long before the new mother was back to work, co-starring with Mario Lanza in the great tenor’s first movie at MGM. She was in two mindless operatic musicals with Lanza: The Midnight Kiss and The Toast of New Orleans. By the time she was cast Showboat, in 1951, her marriage to Jonnie was on the rocks, and she was able to get a divorce granted to her on the grounds of “mental cruelty.”

Kathryn was delighted to play Magnolia Hawks in Showboat, the daughter of the riverboat captain. This was going to be an artistically profound historical film, set around the turn of the century, with glorious music by Jerome Kern. The other female lead was the character of Julie, a biracial woman who performs along the Mississippi River on the “showboat” – a traveling theater company. The part was written for a light-skinned person of color since Julie is perceived to be white but when her lineage is revealed, she is kicked off the boat. Lena Horne was considered. Like Julie, she was biracial, and she was also a skilled singer. Horne had already performed with Kathryn Grayson, in Till the Clouds Roll By, during which she sang one of Showboat’s most iconic songs: “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man.” However, at that time it was a challenge for any person of color to get ahead in Hollywood, no matter how talented. If an African American performer was in a movie in a non-subservient role, their appearance was kept brief so that their scenes could be trimmed if theaters in certain parts of the country decided they didn’t want to show them.

Today, we would refer to it as “whitewashing,” but not an eyelash was batted in 1951 when it was announced that Julie would be played by white actress, Ava Gardner. Another role for a woman of color was significantly reduced in the adaptation, that of the cook, “Queenie,” which had been originally played by Hattie McDaniel in the 1936 Showboat movie. In MGM’s version, Frances E. Williams appears with minimized dialogue and no screen credit. If any of Showboat’s leads noticed how parts involving black people were diminished, it doesn’t appear that anything was said about it, which is a pity.

During the filming of Showboat, Ava Gardener recalled how she and Kathryn would ignore “one of Metro’s cardinal rules,” and between takes “smuggle in enough tequila to send us back home in the best of humor.” She and Howard Keel also got along extremely well. His deep baritone laugh set everyone at ease and they became fast friends. One thing that annoyed Keel about Kathryn was how, when they were dancing, she “moved like a Mack truck.” He later found out it was because Kathryn felt self-conscious dancing close to her male co-stars and was trying to create distance. Her bust was an ample 39 inches, which is why she tried to get out of posing for pin-up photos. “I don’t want to be known as the operatic Jane Russell,” she would say. Ava was more blunt, joking that Kathryn “had the biggest boobs in Hollywood…with her, they didn’t need 3-D!”

In 1954, Kathryn Grayson WAS filmed in 3-D. Television was viewed as competition for the big studios, so “[Mr. Mayer said] we should do great films to get and to keep our audience.” They used the most advanced method available: stereoscopic 3D. Originally a Broadway play, Kiss Me Kate is an updated version of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew – Grayson being the “shrew.” Not only is this Kathryn’s most dynamic role, it’s arguably one of the best musicals of the 50s. The New York Times called it “magnificent,” and it certainly has a memorable Cole Porter score, a phenomenal cast (including one of Kathryn’s best friends – dancer Ann Miller) eye-popping Technicolor and lavish costumes. Best of all the music carries the plot along, enhancing the emotion the characters are feeling. When delivering her solo number “I Hate Men,” Kathryn practically spits out every word, justifiably angry with her ex-husband (Keel) who is acting like “a louse!” When Howard Keel mischievously connives to win her back, it’s hard not to root for him. In real life, Keel and Katie had acknowledged that they loved each other, but they decided remaining friends would be best.  “We were mad about each other, and there was no way to stop it,” Keel later disclosed, “I’m amazed we didn’t say to hell with it and go someplace alone together, but that would have hurt too many people.”

Kathryn never remarried, but she was rarely lonely. In Santa Monica, she owned a 5,381 square foot Tudor mansion. Her aging parents had one wing to themselves, another wing was set aside for her singing teacher, and there was plenty of room left over for herself and her daughter, as well as the many nieces and nephews who would frequently visit. She acknowledged that “belonging to a big family is the best tonic, the best balance wheel, the most effective sanity-keeper and common-sense provider on earth.” Kathryn also extended her home to anyone who needed a safe haven. When her former co-star Mario Lanza unexpectedly died of a massive heart attack at the age of 38, Kathryn invited his wife and four children to live with her. They stayed with her for several months until they felt ready to get back on their feet.

By that time, Kathryn was done with the movies. Her last movie (The Vagabond King) was so embarrassing that she admitted: “it should never have been made.” Kathryn finally pursued the stage career that Louis B. Mayer had kept her from years ago. Few classical crossover singers go on to sing full opera, but in 1959 she fulfilled that dream, singing Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. Throughout the 60s she had roles in La Boheme and La Traviata, as well as operettas like Orpheus in the Underworld, Naughty Marietta, and The Merry Widow. Kathryn also reprised roles from her movies Showboat and Kiss Me Kate, and replaced Julie Andrews as Guinevere in Camelot on Broadway.

Throughout the 70s and 80s, Kathryn Grayson gave many concerts, oftentimes with her old friend Howard Keel. On television, she had a recurring role on the hit show, “Murder She Wrote,” starring another longtime friend Angela Lansbury. As she grew older, she began to travel less and started giving private singing lessons out of her home. It is the same Santa Monica mansion where she ended up living for 65 years. She passed away peacefully in her bed at the age of 88. It’s a shame that she never finished writing the memoir she started. She realized that it wouldn’t be the sensational tell-all publishers wanted. “I’m a Pollyanna,” she confessed, “I love everything and I was saying everyone was beautiful. I just happen to think people are pretty wonderful.”