Ruby Keeler

Ethel Ruby Keeler was born on August 25, 1909, in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, to Ralph Hector and Nellie Keeler, one of six children in an Irish Catholic family. Her father worked as a truck driver, and when Keeler was three years old, the family relocated to New York City. Two of her sisters, Helen and Gertrude, also pursued brief performing careers. Keeler attended St. Catherine of Siena on the city's East Side, where a dance teacher recognized her ability during weekly class sessions and offered to instruct her on Saturdays at no cost to the family.

At around age thirteen, Keeler learned of chorus girl auditions and, despite the legal requirement that performers be at least sixteen, misrepresented her age to compete. At the tap audition, she approached the wooden apron at the front of the stage so her taps could be heard, a move that caught the attention of dance director Julian Mitchell. The exchange earned her a place in George M. Cohan's The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly in 1923, for which she was paid forty-five dollars per week. Around the same time, publicity manager Nils Granlund hired her to perform at Larry Fay's El Fay nightclub. Broadway producer Charles B. Dillingham subsequently cast her in Bye, Bye, Bonnie, followed by Lucky and The Sidewalks of New York, the latter also produced by Dillingham. During her run in The Sidewalks of New York, Florenz Ziegfeld took notice of her and sent her roses along with a note expressing his interest in making her a star.

Keeler appeared in Ziegfeld's Whoopee! in 1928, though she was replaced before the production opened by Ethel Shutta. That same year, Granlund sent her to Los Angeles to assist with the marketing campaign for The Jazz Singer, where she met actor and singer Al Jolson. The two married on September 21, 1928, in a private ceremony in Port Chester, New York. Keeler was nineteen years old at the time of the marriage; Jolson was approximately forty-two. She appeared in the 1929 Broadway musical Show Girl and continued building her stage career before transitioning to film. Keeler and Jolson later appeared together on Broadway in Hold on to Your Hats in 1940, though Keeler was replaced before the opening by Eunice Healey. The couple divorced that same year, having previously adopted a son together.

In 1933, producer Darryl F. Zanuck cast Keeler in the Warner Bros. musical 42nd Street, directed and choreographed by Busby Berkeley, opposite Dick Powell and Bebe Daniels. The film's success led Jack L. Warner to offer Keeler a long-term contract, and she subsequently appeared in Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade, Dames, and Colleen. She and Jolson appeared together on screen in Go into Your Dance, their only shared film. The pair were also satirized in Frank Tashlin's 1937 animated short The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos.

In 1941, Keeler married businessman John Homer Lowe and left show business. The couple had four children together. Lowe died in 1969. Keeler made occasional television guest appearances beginning in the mid-1950s and a small cameo in the 1970 film The Phynx. In 1963, she appeared in The Greatest Show on Earth, a television series produced by Jack Palance.

Keeler's most celebrated return to Broadway came in 1971 with the revival of the 1920s musical No, No, Nanette, in which she starred opposite Jack Gilford, Bobby Van, Helen Gallagher, and Patsy Kelly. The production was supervised by Busby Berkeley, adapted and directed by Burt Shevelove, and choreographed by Donald Saddler, who received the Tony Award for his musical staging. Keeler performed in the production for two seasons on Broadway and then toured in the show for two additional years. Her son John Lowe worked as a Broadway stage manager, beginning with No, No, Nanette in 1970.

Following a brain aneurysm in 1974, Keeler became a spokeswoman for the National Stroke Association. She received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from St. Bonaventure University in 1979 and was honored with a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars in 1992. She also holds a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6730 Hollywood Boulevard. Keeler died of kidney cancer on February 28, 1993, in Rancho Mirage, California, at the age of eighty-three.