Jane Froman

Ellen Jane Froman was born on November 10, 1907, in University City, Missouri, the daughter of Anna Tillman Barcafer and Elmer Ellsworth Froman. When she was approximately five years old, her father disappeared without explanation, though records later confirmed he died in Los Angeles in 1936. Froman spent her childhood and adolescence in Clinton, Missouri, and around the time of her father's disappearance developed a stutter that remained with her throughout her life, disappearing only when she sang. Her mother later remarried, to William Hetzler. In 1919, Froman and her mother relocated to Columbia, Missouri, which she regarded as her hometown. At age thirteen, in 1921, she performed in a piano-and-song recital at Christian College, where her mother served as director of vocal studies. Froman graduated from Christian College in 1926 and subsequently attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism. In 1928 she moved to Cincinnati to study voice at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, completing her studies there in 1930.

Although her vocal training was classical in nature, Froman was drawn early in her career to the popular songwriters of the era, including George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin. She made her first radio appearance on WLW in Cincinnati on October 9, 1929, and her national network debut followed on NBC on July 31, 1931, on the Florsheim Frolic program. At WLW she met vaudeville performer Don Ross, who became her unofficial manager and later her husband, marrying her in September 1933. That same year, Ross persuaded her to move to Chicago, where he worked for NBC radio, and she subsequently relocated to New York City, where she appeared on Chesterfield's Music that Satisfies radio program alongside Bing Crosby. Froman and Ross hosted their own thirteen-episode series on the NBC Red Network beginning July 4, 1937, serving as a summer replacement for The Jack Benny Program.

Froman's Broadway career spanned 1934 to 1943 and included four productions. She appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1931, Keep Off the Grass, Laugh, Town, Laugh!, and the 1943 musical Artists and Models. Her association with the Ziegfeld Follies began in 1933, when she joined the company and was befriended by Fannie Brice. By 1934, at age twenty-seven, she had been voted the top-polled girl singer. That same year, a nationwide poll named her the number-one female singer on radio. Producer and composer Billy Rose, when asked to name the top ten female singers, reportedly answered with Froman's name and described the remaining nine as a group.

Froman's film credits include Kissing Time (1933), Stars Over Broadway (1935), and Radio City Revels (1938). On television, she hosted Jane Froman's U.S.A. Canteen, a thirty-minute CBS Saturday program that premiered October 15, 1952, in which members of the armed services performed alongside her. The program was reduced to fifteen minutes and a twice-weekly schedule on December 30, 1952, and was later retitled The Jane Froman Show, running until June 23, 1955. The song I Believe, written for Froman by Ervin Drake, Irvin Graham, Jimmy Shirl, and Al Stillman, was introduced on the program and is credited as the first hit song introduced on television; it earned Froman a gold record in 1953.

On February 22, 1943, Froman was severely injured when the Pan Am Boeing 314 flying boat Yankee Clipper crashed into the Tagus River near Lisbon, Portugal, while banking into a descending approach. The aircraft's left wingtip struck the water's surface, causing it to dig in and break apart. Of the thirty-nine people on board, fifteen survived. Froman sustained a near-severing cut below her left knee, multiple fractures of her right arm, and a compound fracture of her right leg that physicians threatened to amputate. Before boarding, she had given her seat to fellow singer Tamara Drasin, who was killed in the crash, a decision that, according to Froman's biographer Ilene Stone, troubled her for the rest of her life. The fourth officer, John Curtis Burn, whose back was broken in the crash, constructed a makeshift raft from wreckage to keep himself and Froman afloat until rescue. The two were subsequently sent to the same convalescent home, where they recovered together; they later married on March 12, 1948, following Froman's 1948 divorce from Ross. Froman and fellow survivor Gypsy Markoff sued Pan American through attorney Harry A. Gair, a pioneer in aviation crash litigation, and a private law passed in 1958 awarded Froman $23,403.58 in compensation under the Federal Employees' Compensation Act.

Less than a year after the crash, Froman returned to Broadway to appear in Artists and Models, performing in a leg brace and using a wheelchair after having undergone thirteen operations. Over the course of her life she endured thirty-nine operations in total and wore a leg brace permanently. In 1945 she returned to Europe to entertain American troops, giving ninety-five performances while walking on crutches. During the late 1940s, Froman became addicted to painkillers and alcohol, addictions she eventually overcame. In 1949 she entered the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, for treatment of depression, remaining there for six months.

The 1952 film With a Song in My Heart told the story of Froman's life, with Susan Hayward portraying her in a performance that earned Hayward an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Froman supplied Hayward's singing voice in the film and served as its technical advisor. The Capitol Records album of the same title was the best-selling album of 1952. In 2003, DRG Records reissued the album on CD alongside the 1952 revival cast recording of Pal Joey, in which Froman sang the role of Vera Simpson, a part originally made famous by Vivienne Segal. On January 4, 1948, Froman joined the cast of The Pause That Refreshes, a Sunday evening CBS program sponsored by Coca-Cola, marking her first regular radio role following the plane crash. She was a celebrity guest on the March 1, 1953, episode of What's My Line, during which panelist Hal Block noted he had been scheduled to be on the same ill-fated flight. Jane Froman died on April 22, 1980.