Gordon MacRae

Albert Gordon MacRae was born on March 12, 1921, in East Orange, New Jersey, to William LaMont MacRae, a toolmaker and radio singer descended from Clan MacRae, and Helen Violet Sonn, a concert pianist. He attended Nottingham High School in Syracuse, New York, where he participated in the Drama Club, before graduating from Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 1940. During World War II, MacRae served as a navigator in IX Troop Carrier Command with the United States Army Air Forces. A baritone, he first gained public attention by winning a contest that brought him an opportunity to sing at the 1939 New York World's Fair alongside the Harry James and Les Brown orchestras.

MacRae's stage career on Broadway spanned from 1941 to 1972. He made his Broadway debut in 1942 in Junior Miss, serving as a replacement for Walter Collins, and secured his first recording contract shortly thereafter. A number of those early recordings were made with Jo Stafford. In 1946, he appeared in the revue Three to Make Ready, which ran for 326 performances. Decades later, he returned to Broadway as a replacement for Robert Preston in I Do! I Do! in 1967, and in 1972 he took part in A Celebration of Richard Rodgers. His stage work outside Broadway included productions of Carousel, Annie Get Your Gun, Guys and Dolls, Kismet, Oklahoma!, and Paint Your Wagon, performed at venues ranging from the Music Hall at Fair Park to summer stock tours and engagements in Columbus, Ohio.

On radio, MacRae replaced Frank Sinatra on a program in 1943 before departing for military service. From 1945 to 1948 he hosted and performed on The Gordon MacRae Show for the CBS radio network, where conductor Archie Bleyer served as a collaborator. In 1946 he hosted Skyline Roof, a fifteen-minute variety program that featured emerging talent including accordionist John Serry Sr., and also served that year as the singing emcee of The Teentimers Club. MacRae additionally hosted The Railroad Hour, a half-hour anthology series presenting condensed versions of hit Broadway musicals, the recordings of which were later released as studio cast albums and subsequently reissued on CD.

MacRae signed with Warner Bros. in 1947 and made his film debut the following year in The Big Punch, a boxing drama. His early Warner Bros. work included the film noir Backfire with Virginia Mayo, made in 1948 and released in 1950, and the musical Look for the Silver Lining in 1949, in which he played Frank Carter opposite June Haver in a biopic of Marilyn Miller directed by David Butler. He reteamed with Haver and Butler in The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady in 1950, the same year he appeared in the Western Return of the Frontiersman and starred opposite Doris Day in Tea for Two. MacRae and Day continued their on-screen partnership in The West Point Story and On Moonlight Bay, both in 1951, and reunited again for By the Light of the Silvery Moon in 1953. That same year he starred opposite Kathryn Grayson in The Desert Song and appeared with Jane Powell in Three Sailors and a Girl.

MacRae's most prominent film roles came through two Rodgers and Hammerstein adaptations. He played Curly in the 1955 screen version of Oklahoma! alongside Shirley Jones, and the two were paired again the following year in Carousel, produced at 20th Century Fox. Also in 1956, he portrayed Buddy De Sylva in The Best Things in Life Are Free for the same studio. MacRae was the godfather of Shirley Jones's son Shaun Cassidy. His later film appearances included supporting roles in Zero to Sixty in 1978 and The Pilot in 1980.

In television, MacRae hosted The Gordon MacRae Show on NBC in 1956 and made frequent appearances on variety programs including The Ford Show Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, and The Bell Telephone Hour. He also appeared on drama programs such as Lux Video Theatre, guest-starred on The Polly Bergen Show in 1958, and starred in the television musical The Gift of the Magi that same year. During Christmas 1958, MacRae and Tennessee Ernie Ford performed the hymn "O Holy Night" together. He later guest-starred on McCloud.

In his personal life, MacRae married Sheila MacRae in 1941; the couple had four children, including actresses Heather and Meredith MacRae, before divorcing in 1967. On September 25, 1967, he married Elizabeth Lambert Schrafft, with whom he had one daughter and remained married until his death. MacRae contended with alcohol problems for many years, overcoming them by the late 1970s. He developed cancer of the mouth and jaw and died on January 24, 1986, of pneumonia at a hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska, at the age of 64. He was buried at Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln, Nebraska.