Janet Blair

Janet Blair, born Martha Janet Lafferty on April 23, 1921, in Altoona, Pennsylvania, was an American big-band singer, film actress, and Broadway performer. Her parents were musically inclined — her father led his church choir and performed solos, while her mother played both piano and organ. She had two siblings, a brother named Fred Jr. and a sister named Louise. Blair died on February 19, 2007, at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, from complications of pneumonia, at the age of 85. She was cremated.

Blair's entry into show business came through the Hal Kemp Orchestra, where she worked as a featured singer. It was during this period that she met Louis Ferdinand Busch, Kemp's pianist and arranger, whom she married on July 12, 1943, in Lake Arrowhead, California. That marriage ended in divorce in March 1950. She later married television producer Nick Mayo, with whom she had two children, Andrew and Amanda. That marriage lasted nineteen years before ending in divorce in 1971.

Her film career began in 1941 under contract to Columbia Pictures. Among her most recognized screen appearances were roles as Rosalind Russell's sister in My Sister Eileen (1942) and as Rita Hayworth's friend in Tonight and Every Night (1945). During World War II, she was featured as a pin-up in the March 1944 issue of Yank, the Army Weekly. In 1947, she appeared in The Fabulous Dorseys, playing a singer, and in 1948 received star billing in both the crime drama I Love Trouble and the comedy The Fuller Brush Man. Columbia dropped her in 1947. She returned to film in 1962, taking a dramatic role in the British horror film Night of the Eagle and appearing alongside Tony Randall, James Garner, and Kim Novak in Boys' Night Out. In 1968, she played Katie Bower, wife to Buddy Ebsen's character, in Walt Disney Pictures' The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band.

Blair's Broadway career spanned from 1950 to 1972. Her stage work included starring roles in South Pacific, A Girl Can Tell, and Mame, as well as an appearance in Follies. Her connection to South Pacific began with the American touring production in 1950, in which she played the lead role of Nellie Forbush for more than 1,200 performances over three years. She starred in the Broadway comedy A Girl Can Tell in 1953.

On television, Blair was a cast member during the 1956–1957 season of Caesar's Hour, the comedy-variety series fronted by Sid Caesar. In 1955, she starred as Venus in a live NBC production of One Touch of Venus, and in 1958 she served as Dinah Shore's summer replacement on the Dinah Shore Chevy Show. She appeared as a guest panelist on the June 9, 1957 episode of What's My Line? and costarred with Henry Fonda in the ABC comedy-drama series The Smith Family. Her final television appearance was in a 1991 episode of Murder, She Wrote. In radio, she costarred with George Raft in a 1942 episode of Lux Radio Theatre on CBS. Blair also recorded an album of standards, Flame Out!, released in 1959 on the Dico label, which included tracks such as "Don't Explain" and "Then You've Never Been Blue." Outside of entertainment, Blair was a Republican who campaigned for Thomas Dewey in the 1944 presidential election.