Ruth Sato

Ruth Sato (1904–1992) was a Broadway chorus dancer, gossip columnist, music promoter, and nightclub manager. Born in Manhattan to a Japanese father, Masazo Sato, and an Irish mother, Grace Bedeliah McIntyre, she is recognized as the first Japanese performer to appear in Broadway chorus work. Her father was a successful art importer, florist, and antique dealer in Manhattan, and he took Ruth on multiple trips to Japan during her childhood so she could connect with her cultural heritage. Ruth is related to Eisaku Satō, the 39th Prime Minister of Japan, and her grand-nephew, Alastar McNeil, performs with the Beatles tribute band RAIN.

Sato initially intended to become a schoolteacher and studied education briefly at Barnard College in New York. A vocational counselor discouraged that path, questioning whether any school would hire a Japanese teacher in a predominantly white country. On the advice of that counselor and her father, she turned to dance instead. Around 1923, after a friend described her experiences at the Ziegfeld Follies, Sato left Barnard and signed a contract to dance chorus at the New York Hippodrome. She went on to perform at numerous New York City nightclubs, speakeasies, and Broadway theaters, including the original Cotton Club, the Savoy Ballroom, the Onyx Club, Smalls Paradise, and Leon and Eddie's, among others.

Her Broadway career spanned from 1925 to 1930 and beyond, encompassing at least eight musicals. Verified credits include the revue Sweet and Low, the musicals Hold Everything, Funny Face, Lady Do, and The Wild Rose. Additional Broadway productions in which she appeared include Song of the Flame, Billy Rose's Crazy Quilt, and Heads Up. Early in her career she worked for Broadway producer Vinton Freedley, then for Arthur Hammerstein, and subsequently for Billy Rose from 1931 to 1935. Among the notable performers she worked alongside were Fred and Adele Astaire in Funny Face, Bert Lahr in Hold Everything, Fanny Brice in Crazy Quilt and Sweet and Low, Victor Moore in Funny Face, Hold Everything, and Heads Up, Ray Bolger in Heads Up, and George Jessel in Sweet and Low.

Despite her sustained presence in Broadway productions, Sato found that producers had typecast her strictly in chorus roles, limiting her ability to advance. After four years of pursuing a larger opportunity, she secured a breakthrough in June 1935 when she persuaded producer Harry Gourfain to allow her to perform specialty tap dancing in jazz numbers for the show Round the World Cruise at the Metropolitan Theater in Boston. She later danced ballet as well, appearing in Song of the Flame in 1936 with choreographer Lew Christensen, and in East Wind, an allegorical ballet presented at the St. Louis Municipal Opera in August 1940, with Sterling Holloway also appearing in the road show version.

In April 1929, Sato purchased the Japanese rights to Hold Everything from producers Alex Aarons and Vinton Freedley with the intention of producing her own Japanese-language version of the show for audiences at the Imperial Theater in Japan. She had arranged costumes, translated lyrics, financial backing, and technical and musical directors for the project, which would have made her the first person to bring an American vaudeville production to Japan. The October 1929 stock market crash and the ensuing Depression brought those plans to a halt.

Beginning in December 1933, Sato danced for Billy Rose at his theater-restaurant Casino de Paree on 54th Street near Broadway, where she also met novelist John O'Hara. By December 1939 she was performing at Leon and Eddie's on 52nd Street, playing stooge to Eddie Davis and dancing. She also helped to start Forbidden City, a Chinese nightclub on 58th Street featuring American music performed by an all-Chinese cast.

Over the course of her career in entertainment, Sato became knowledgeable about the nightclub business and acquainted with members of the Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Jimmie Lunceford bands. She served as a publicist for the Count Basie Orchestra in the late 1930s and worked as a gossip columnist for Down Beat jazz magazine under Ned Williams, for The Boston Record under George MacKinnon in 1938, for Swing magazine under Barry Ulanov, and for The Boston Post. She later spent approximately 25 years managing Jazz, Ltd., a Chicago Dixieland jazz nightclub, together with her husband, Bill Reinhardt. In 1932, the Japan Times awarded Sato a prize recognizing her as the most popular Japanese woman in America.