Kathryn Grayson

Kathryn Grayson, born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick on February 9, 1922, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was an American actress and coloratura soprano. She was one of four children of Charles Hedrick, a building contractor and realtor, and Lillian Hedrick, née Grayson. The family relocated to Kirkwood, Missouri, outside St. Louis, and later to California when Grayson was fifteen. Her sister Frances Raeburn, born Mildred Hedrick, was also an actress and singer who appeared alongside her in the film Seven Sweethearts. She had two brothers, Clarence "Bud" E. Hedrick and Harold.

Grayson began training as an opera singer at age twelve, after a janitor at the St. Louis Municipal Opera House discovered her singing on the empty stage and introduced her to Frances Marshall of the Chicago Civic Opera, who became her voice teacher. In 1940, an MGM talent scout observed her performing at a music festival. The studio, seeking a replacement for Deanna Durbin, signed Grayson and put her through eighteen months of voice, drama, and diction training, along with a regimen of dieting and exercise. Her screen debut came in 1941's Andy Hardy's Private Secretary, in which she played secretary Kathryn Land and participated in three musical numbers.

Her film career through the 1940s included roles in The Vanishing Virginian, Rio Rita, and Seven Sweethearts, all released in 1942. In 1943 she appeared in Thousands Cheer alongside Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney, Eleanor Powell, and June Allyson, playing the singing daughter of an Army commander. During the period from 1943 to 1945, she largely stepped away from film to entertain troops and perform on radio programs, reportedly insisting that her audiences be integrated at a time when military audiences were segregated. She returned to screens in Anchors Aweigh, a musical romantic comedy co-starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra that became the fifth-highest-grossing film of 1945, earning over $4.779 million. MGM subsequently paired her again with Sinatra in It Happened in Brooklyn and The Kissing Bandit, both of which performed poorly at the box office.

In 1949, Grayson was partnered with tenor Mario Lanza in That Midnight Kiss, and the two were reunited in 1950 for The Toast of New Orleans, in which she performed the Academy Award-nominated song "Be My Love." Her most commercially successful film of the early 1950s was the 1951 remake of Show Boat, in which she played Magnolia Hawks; the film was the third-highest-grossing release of that year, earning over $5.533 million. She teamed with Howard Keel for a third time in Kiss Me Kate, released in November 1953, playing Lilli Vanessi/Katharina in what became her most acclaimed screen role. The film featured songs by Cole Porter, choreography by Hermes Pan, and musical direction by André Previn, and was one of only two musicals filmed in 3-D. While on loan to Warner Bros., she also appeared in The Desert Song alongside Gordon MacRae and in So This Is Love, both released in 1953.

On television, Grayson guest starred in the CBS anthology series General Electric Theater and on Playhouse 90. In the 1980s she appeared in three episodes of Murder, She Wrote as recurring character Ideal Molloy.

Grayson's stage work encompassed productions including Show Boat, Rosalinda, Kiss Me, Kate, Naughty Marietta, and The Merry Widow, for which she received a nomination for Chicago's Sarah Siddons Award. Her Broadway career spanned from 1960 to 1963, with her credits including Camelot. The external biographical record places her Camelot engagement between 1962 and 1964. Later in the decade she performed in several operas, among them La bohème, Madama Butterfly, Orpheus in the Underworld, and La traviata. Kathryn Grayson died on February 17, 2010.