Kate Smith

Kathryn Elizabeth Smith was born on May 1, 1907, in Greenville, Virginia, to Charlotte Yarnell Smith and William Herman Smith, and was raised in Washington, D.C. Her father operated the Capitol News Company, a newspaper and magazine distribution business serving the greater D.C. area, and sang in the choir at a Catholic church; her mother played piano at a Presbyterian church. Smith was the youngest of three daughters, the middle child having died in infancy. She did not speak until age four, yet within a year she was singing at church social events, and by age eight she was performing for troops at Army camps in the Washington area during World War I. She never received a formal singing lesson and possessed a vocal range of two and a half octaves. Her earliest stage appearances were during amateur nights at vaudeville theaters in Washington, D.C.

Smith attended Business High School in Washington, D.C., the institution now known as Theodore Roosevelt High School, likely completing her studies there in 1924. Her father, concerned about her interest in performing, enrolled her in the George Washington University School for Nursing, where she attended classes for nine months between 1924 and 1925 before withdrawing to pursue a career in show business.

Her path to Broadway began when she secured a spot on the bill at Keith's Theater in Boston as a singer. Actor and producer Eddie Dowling, who was headlining that engagement, recruited her for a revue he was developing. That production, Honeymoon Lane, opened in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on August 29, 1926, and transferred to Broadway approximately one month later. During the show's New York run, Smith made her first phonograph recordings, drawing on songs from the production. Initial sessions were recorded for Victor but went unissued; her first commercially released recordings came from an October 28, 1926, session on the Columbia label, with additional Columbia recordings made through May 1927.

After Honeymoon Lane closed, Smith found work scarce in New York and returned to Washington, D.C., where she performed sporadically in vaudeville. She subsequently joined the road company of Vincent Youmans' Hit the Deck, earning acclaim for her performance of "Hallelujah!" From there she returned to New York to take the company lead in George White's Flying High, which opened on March 3, 1930, and ran for 122 performances. In that production she played Pansy Sparks, a role written largely as the target of co-star Bert Lahr's jokes about her size. Smith later recalled weeping in her dressing room after performances due to the humiliation the role caused her.

It was her work in Hit the Deck that drew the attention of Columbia Records A&R executive Ted Collins in 1930. Collins became her manager in a 50–50 partnership and placed her on radio in 1931, launching what became a major broadcasting career. She began with a twice-a-week NBC series, Kate Smith Sings, which expanded quickly to six broadcasts per week, followed by a succession of CBS programs including Kate Smith and Her Swanee Music, sponsored by La Palina Cigars, from 1931 to 1933; The Kate Smith Matinee and The Kate Smith New Star Revue, both running in 1934–35; Kate Smith's Coffee Time, sponsored by A&P, in 1935–36; and The Kate Smith A&P Bandwagon in 1936–37. The Kate Smith Hour, a radio variety program featuring comedy, music, and drama, ran for eight years from 1937 to 1945 and served as the platform on which Abbott and Costello and Henny Youngman first reached a nationwide audience. A series of sketches on that program based on a Broadway production of the same name led to The Aldrich Family becoming its own separate series in 1940. Smith continued broadcasting on the Mutual Broadcasting System, CBS, ABC, and NBC through 1960.

Between 1929 and 1931, Smith returned to Columbia's recording studios, releasing material on the budget labels Harmony, Diva, and Velvet Tone under a pseudonym. Her chart successes included "River, Stay 'Way from My Door" in 1931, "Rose O'Day" in 1941, "The Woodpecker Song" and "The Last Time I Saw Paris" in 1940, "The White Cliffs of Dover" and "I Don't Want to Walk Without You" in 1942, "There Goes That Song Again" in 1944, "Seems Like Old Times" in 1946, and "Now Is the Hour" in 1947. "Rose O'Day" sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA. Her theme song, "When the Moon Comes over the Mountain," was one she had helped write. She greeted her radio audiences with "Hello, everybody!" and closed each broadcast with "Thanks for listenin'."

In 1929, while still active on the stage, Smith starred in a Vitaphone short feature titled Songbird of the South, in which she performed "Bless You Sister" and "Carolina Moon." The descriptor Songbird of the South had come into use in connection with her stage performances in the late 1920s, appearing in newspaper advertisements promoting her appearances and in coverage of her NBC Radio Network debut in April 1929. The Washington, D.C., Sunday Star noted that despite being born in Virginia, Smith had spent nearly all of her life in the D.C. area. She appeared in the 1932 film Hello, Everybody!, alongside Randolph Scott and Sally Blane, and in the 1943 wartime film This Is the Army, in which she performed "God Bless America," the song that became her signature.

Known professionally as The First Lady of Radio, Smith became widely identified with "God Bless America" and "When the Moon Comes over the Mountain." During World War II she contributed to the sale of over $600 million in war bonds. She also made a dramatic radio appearance starring in "Little Johnny Appleseed" on Silver Theater on May 14, 1944, and collaborated with actor Pat O'Brien on the Viva America program for CBS in 1946, a broadcast produced in support of American cultural diplomacy initiatives in South America. Kathryn Elizabeth Smith died on June 17, 1986.