Peg La Centra

Peg La Centra, born Margherita Maria Francesca LaCentra on April 10, 1910, in Boston, was an American contralto singer and actress whose career spanned radio, stage, film, and television. She died on June 1, 1996, in Los Angeles, of a heart attack at age 86.

La Centra's early training took place at the Fenway Academy of Dramatic Art and the New England Conservatory of Music, and she also graduated from Katharine Gibbs College. She began her professional career as an announcer at WNAC and a performer on WBZ radio in Boston before relocating to New York in 1931 to pursue network broadcasting. Her NBC work included appearances on Beauty Box Theater, Circus Night in Silvertown, and Lucky Smith.

Throughout the 1930s, La Centra built a substantial radio profile. In 1934, she sang with Leo Reisman's orchestra under the pseudonym Barbara Fulton, a name required because Reisman's sponsor competed with another program for which she was already under contract. That same year, she began a weekly engagement on NBC with Harry Reser and his orchestra. In 1935, she was chosen alongside Bob Lawrence to headline The Radio City Party on NBC-Blue, and she also served as the leading lady on Max Baer's radio program. By 1938, she had earned her own vehicle, The Peg LaCentra Show, on NBC, and appeared that year on For Men Only as well. In 1940, she was among the featured performers on the Gulden's Mustard Serenade, a twice-weekly 15-minute variety program on NBC. She and singer Jerry Wayne later co-starred in a twice-weekly musical program on CBS in 1944, and she took on dramatic work as a supporting player in Mutual's romantic thriller The Modern Adventures of Casanova in 1952. She also recorded programs for NBC's Thesaurus music service.

La Centra's work with orchestras was a significant part of her career. She sang with Phil Spitalny and his orchestra in 1932, and her first recording, "The Fortune Teller," was made in 1934 with Johnny Green's orchestra for the Columbia label. In 1936, she joined Artie Shaw as a vocalist for his newly formed orchestra, a professional relationship that grew out of their earlier collaboration on The Mell-O-Roll Ice Cream Show. With Shaw, she performed at the Paramount Theater and the Lexington Hotel in New York and recorded for Brunswick Records for a year. She additionally sang with Benny Goodman's orchestra and recorded with Jerry Sears' orchestra for Bluebird Records.

Her film work included ghost singing for prominent Hollywood actresses. She dubbed the vocal performances of Susan Hayward in Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947) and Ida Lupino in The Man I Love (1947). She appeared in the short film Broadway Follies (1937), part of a series of single-reel musicals produced by Columbia Pictures, and sang in café sequences in Humoresque (1946).

La Centra's Broadway credit came in 1943, when she appeared in the drama The Patriots, playing the role of Mrs. Hamilton. Beyond Broadway, she performed in a production of the romantic comedy Janus at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1957, the same year she appeared on television as Amanda in the CBS comedy series The Marge and Gower Champion Show.

In 1939, La Centra married actor Paul Stewart. For a considerable period, the two maintained a commuter marriage, with La Centra based in New York for her radio work while Stewart pursued his film career in Hollywood.