[Dixielandjazz] Tony Martin RIP (London Telegraph)

[Robert Ringwald]

Tony Martin
American singer and actor touted as the new Clark Gable who found happiness with
Cyd Charisse
London Telegraph, July 31, 2012
Tony Martin, the American vocalist and actor, who has died aged 98, sang with several
post-war big bands and was touted in Hollywood as the new Clark Gable; in the 1950s
he became a popular star in Britain through appearances at the London Palladium with
his second wife, the dancer Cyd Charisse.
Dark-haired and handsome, Martin was originally a saxophonist bandleader whose rich,
virile tones found particular favour with women. He arrived in Hollywood when he
was just 24 and, though he never really adjusted to the feverish lifestyle, made
several memorable films, among them The Big Store (1941), Till the Clouds Roll By
(1946), Deep in My Heart (1954) and Hit the Deck (1955).
He was also in the remake of Charles Boyer's Algiers, retitled Casbah, in 1948. Mischievously,
Martin let it be known that Boyer had invited him to "come with me to the Casbah",
a tale that dogged the unfortunate Frenchman for the rest of his days.
Giving up films, Martin and his long-legged second wife formed an act which toured
the more exclusive American supper clubs and, on several occasions, played the London
Palladium. Indeed, such were Martin's many achievements in radio, recording, films
and television that he has the unusual honour of appearing no fewer than four times
on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Tony Martin was born Alvin Morris Jr on Christmas Day 1913 in San Francisco, and
educated at Oakland High School and St Mary's College. From childhood he sang for
family and friends, and as a teenager proficient on clarinet and saxophone he formed
a quartet backing small-time acts in vaudeville halls.
Having failed his law finals at college -- prompting a lifelong jibe about him never
having passed a bar since -- Martin began touring nightclubs playing saxophone and
singing. He worked for the bandleaders Anson Weeks and Tom Gerun and played alongside
a young Woody Herman.
Aiming to emulate Bing Crosby as a leading all-rounder, Martin wound down his instrumental
work for the sake of his voice. The singer Frances Langford then recommended that
he try Hollywood on the strength of his good looks and fine physique.
Screen tests landed Martin a minor role in Follow the Fleet (1935), and shortly thereafter
he was spotted in a nightclub by Darryl F Zanuck, who cast him in several films for
Twentieth Century Fox, including Shirley Temple's Poor Little Rich Girl and Sing,
Baby, Sing (both 1936). In the latter he sang When Did You Leave Heaven? and starred
alongside the Ritz Brothers and Alice Faye. Between 1936 and 1938 Martin made a dozen
films for Fox, four of them with the sultry-voiced Alice Faye, whom he married in
1937.
Meanwhile his vocal powers as a theatre and club artist continued to grow. On radio
he became Gracie Allen's boyfriend in The Burns and Allen Show and he recorded eight
times with the Ray Noble Orchestra for the Brunswick label. In March 1939 he had
his first multimillion seller with Begin the Beguine, coupled with September Song.
In 1941 he moved to MGM, where film moguls had promised to build him into another
Clark Gable. Offered Ziegfeld Girl, Martin insisted on top billing over Jimmy Stewart,
Judy Garland, Lana Turner and Hedy Lamarr. This demand may have been tongue-in-cheek;
and in 1977 he confessed to the BBC: "Can you imagine being paid a good salary to
make love to those girls?" This was the film that featured You Stepped Out of a Dream,
which became a standard and a tune with which Martin would be forever associated.
Martin worked next with the Marx Brothers, playing the song demonstrator in The Big
Store. The film featured the Tenement Symphony which, with its themes of peace and
racial goodwill, became a favourite wartime morale-booster, especially with British
audiences.
The war caught Martin's career on the crest of a wave, and following Pearl Harbor
he joined the US Army Air Force. Eventually he was seconded to the Glenn Miller Orchestra
as a vocalist, achieving the distinction of being liked not just by Miller but by
the band members too, defying the traditional enmity between musicians and the singers
they accompany.
On demobilisation Martin returned to Hollywood and in 1946 he sang in Till the Clouds
Roll By, the biopic about the songwriter Jerome Kern. In the same year his recording
of To Each His Own reached number four in the record charts.
The early post-war years took him to London, where he appeared at the Palladium to
great acclaim. He revived his film career in Bob Hope's Here Come the Girls in 1952
and the following year he achieved his ambition to work with Esther Williams in Easy
to Love (1953).
Martin's last two significant film roles featured him singing Lover Come Back to
Me in the Sigmund Romberg biopic Deep in My Heart and a forgettable comedy, Let's
Be Happy (1957), filmed in Scotland. In 1982 he had a cameo role in Joe Pesci's film
Dear Mr Wonderful.
>From the 1960s on Martin concentrated on his work as a nightclub vocalist and his
own television show, on which he developed as distinctive style of deadpan humour.
He continued to release records, having particular success in Britain with Stranger
in Paradise and Walk Hand in Hand, which reached numbers seven and four respectively
in the charts.
In 1984 he appeared in his final British tour, still delighting fans with numbers
such as Feelings; I Write the Songs; and What I Did For Love.
Tony Martin's marriage to Alice Faye ended in divorce in 1941. He married Cyd Charisse
in 1948 and their notably happy marriage of 60 years was one of the longest in Hollywood.
She died in 2008, and he is survived by a stepson from his second wife's first marriage.
His son, Tony Martin Jr, predeceased him in April 2011.
__________
Tony Martin, born December 25 1913, died July 27 2012.
Messages in this topic (7)
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6a. Tony Martin (London Guardian)
    Posted by: "
songbirds-owner at yahoogroups.com
"
songbirds-owner at yahoogroups.com
    Date: Tue Jul 31, 2012 6:39 pm ((PDT))
Tony Martin
American entertainer and singer popular in the 1940s and 50s
by Ronald Bergan
London Guardian, July 31, 2012
The American entertainer Tony Martin, who has died aged 98, was once described as
a singing tuxedo. Although he was rather a stiff actor, he was handsome and charming,
with a winning, dimpled smile. What mattered most, however, was his mellifluous tenor
voice, which he used softly in ballads such as To Each His Own and I Get Ideas, and
powerfully in Begin the Beguine and There's No Tomorrow, all hit records in the 1940s
and 50s.
He was one of the top crooners of the period with Vic Damone, Andy Williams and Dick
Haymes, all of them just below Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra in esteem and popularity.
According to Mel Torme: "Tony Martin was technically the greatest singer of them
all, as well as being the classiest guy around, both as an entertainer and a person."
He was born Al (Alvin) Morris in San Francisco into a Jewish family and brought up
in Oakland. The young boy started singing at his mother's sewing club. He switched
to the saxophone when his voice changed, and quickly mastered that instrument and
the clarinet, organised his own band and began playing professionally.
One night a Hollywood agent heard him singing on a radio show, saw that he had the
good looks to match his voice, and promised to get him to Hollywood on condition
he change his name. He took "Tony" from a gambler in a story in Liberty Magazine
and "Martin" from the bandleader Freddy Martin. When his father heard of the name
change, he shouted: "Tony's a name for a horse!"
Martin's first film was the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical Follow the Fleet (1936),
in which he had a bit part as a sailor. A contract followed with 20th Century-Fox,
where he met his first wife, Alice Faye, soon to be the studio's leading musical
star. Married in 1937 and divorced in 1940, they appeared in four films together,
although Martin usually just had a number as a band vocalist. The first, Sing, Baby,
Sing, brought him the Oscar-nominated number, When Did You Leave Heaven?, and in
You Can't Have Everything (1937), Faye was the star, while Martin, eighth-billed,
sang The Loveliness of You.
In his first starring role, he was billed as Anthony Martin in Sing and Be Happy
(1937), little more than a vehicle for what Variety called, characteristically, his
"socko vocalisthenics". He then played the romantic lead and straight man to the
Ritz Brothers in Life Begins in College (later known as The Joy Parade, 1937) and
Kentucky Moonshine (later Three Men and a Girl, 1938), and to Eddie Cantor in Ali
Baba Goes to Town (1937). More satisfying to him was his co-starring with Rita Hayworth
in Music in My Heart (1940), a modest Columbia musical.
Martin's most prestigious film was Ziegfeld Girl (1941) at MGM, in which he warbled
You Stepped Out of a Dream to a statuesque Hedy Lamarr, and Caribbean Love Song.
The Big Store (1941) is not considered the Marx Brothers' funniest movie but, for
most critics, the comic high spot, albeit unintentionally, was Martin's heartfelt
rendition of the bombastic Tenement Symphony -- "The sounds of the ghetto inspired
the allegretto."
In the second world war, Martin served briefly in the navy then switched to the army
amid rumours that he had tried to buy a navy commission. The rumours persisted after
the war, even though he served bravely in the Pacific and was decorated with a Bronze
Star. After the war, Martin returned to Hollywood and Casbah (1948) in which he was
miscast as Pepe le Moko, jewel thief in hiding, previously played by Jean Gabin and
Charles Boyer, though he did make full use of the tuneful Leo Robin-Harold Arlen
songs.
In Two Tickets to Broadway (1951), Martin bravely attempted the Prologue from Pagliacci,
less ill-conceived than Sinatra's version of Mozart's La Ci Darem La Mano in It Happened
in Brooklyn a few years earlier. He was more at home as a smoothie romancing Esther
Williams in Easy to Love (1953), in which he had the best number, That's What a Rainy
Day Is For. Other songs he delivered with panache were Lover Come Back to Me, in
Deep in My Heart (1954), and More Than You Know, in Hit The Deck (1955).
As the Hollywood musical declined, so did Martin's film career -- his last musical
was the British-made Let's Be Happy (1957), starring Vera-Ellen. He then began to
concentrate on his cabaret shows around the US and abroad, sometimes appearing with
his second wife, the leggy dancer Cyd Charisse, whom he married in 1948. They remained
together for 60 years until her death in 2008. Martin reappeared on the big screen
in 1982 in a German-made film, Dear Mr Wonderful, in which he genially took himself
off as a Las Vegas nightclub singer. The voice had not changed much and the tuxedo
still fitted him perfectly.
He is survived by Nico Charisse, his adopted son from Cyd Charisse's first marriage.
Tony Martin Jr, his son by Charisse, died last year.
__________
Tony Martin (Alvin Morris), actor and singer; born 25 December 1913; died 27 July
2012.


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