American actress and singer Betty Gale Robbins climbed the ladder to stardom as a model. Then she did it all over again as a singer, with a number of name bands and appearances on radio and TV shows. The final jump in her career was to the movies and Hollywood, where she became a true star during the post-World War II years.

She was born in Mitchell, Indiana, in 1921. She started to work as a commercial model while she was still a high school girl in Aurora, Ill., and in 1938 she was crowned “Miss Chicago.” During her days of modeling she posed for some of the top companies in America. She even appeared on the cover of Life magazine, and was at different times the Iodent toothpaste girl and the Lux Toilet soap chick. Betty began singing at eighteen, and went on to become one of the Windy City’s favorite singers in what felt like record time. She was a regular performer in the stage show at the Hotel Sherman’s College Inn in Chicago. She changed her stage name around then. An article in the August 6, 1939, issue of the Chicago Tribune reported: “Betty Robbins, Chicago singer who joined this show recently, holds over for the new program, under the name Gale Robbins. Gale is her middle name.” Having appeared on some fairly popular broadcasts, she was not a complete unknown when she joined the Phil Levant band at the Schroeder Hotel in Milwaukee in October 1940, and the next year, when she sang with Jan Garber’s orchestra at Chicago’s famous hotel Palmer House. In January 1942 audiences could find her singing with the former Hal Kemp orchestra, conduced by Art Jarrett.

In June 1942 she became the featured singer on the Ben Bernie War Workers’ Program, a Monday to Friday musical CBS radio series broadcast from Chicago, coast to coast, with the orchestra conducted by the Ole Maestro of the stage, Ben Bernie, (who died October 1943, at 52). Six months later she was signed by Twentieth Century Fox studios, and left her singing spot to head for Hollywood, where she aimed to start a new career in the movies.

Her first role was supposed to be in “The Gang’s All Here” starring Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda, but it went to Alice Faye in the end. She finally debuted as an actress in the Otto Preminger film “In the Meantime, Darling” in 1944, but her first claim to nationwide fame came as a popular World War II pin-up girl, when she appeared on the cover of “Yank, The Army Weekly” that same year. The following summer she toured the U.S. Army bases in Europe for two months as singer-performer of the Bob Hope Show. They covered Europe in a C-47, visiting England, France and Germany. At the start of 1947, she enjoyed a successful stint at the Copacabana in New York.

Her postwar movie roles, mostly sultry second leads, were typically light-hearted in nature, and she did not always sing. She was lent out to other studios, and climbed the ladder of fame as United Artists signed her for “My Dear Secretary” (1948) and RKO on “Race Street” (1948) in the role of a nightclub singer. Other important films on her career where she co-starred were MGM’s “The Barkleys of Broadway” (1949), and 20th Century Fox’s “Oh, You Beautiful Doll” (1950), “Three Little Words” (1950), and “Calamity Jane” (1953).

In 1953, she shone bright during her tour of engagements around the country, which included the Roxy in New York, the Chicago Theatre, and the Olympic Theatre in Miami. In her show, Gale featured the singing and dancing routines that had earned her the coveted role of stardom and garnered rave reviews throughout all her personal appearances.

In 1955 she appeared in the Republic film “Double Jeopardy”, and in 1956 she played one of the main characters in the 20th Century Fox Richard Fleischer film “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing,” a pivotal role in her career as an actress.

In 1958 she explained, “I started out as a singer with dance bands in my home territory of Chicago. When 20th gave me a film contract, I was tested for acting, and they liked me so well as an actress, I hardly had a chance to sing anymore. “People always are so terribly surprised to find out I’m a professional singer,” she complained. “They think of me as an actress. But if I sang more, Hollywood wouldn’t give me a chance to act. It’s this stupid typecasting thing. Very few recording artists are given an opportunity to become actors.”

So although her dramatic roles outnumbered her singing ones throughout her career, she never forgot that her first claim to fame had been for her vocals in her album “I’m a Dreamer” on Vik Records. She had excellent accompaniment by the Eddie Cano Orchestra (Cano was also responsible for a versatile set of arrangements). Without having any one strong suit, Gale’s singing is without reproach because she knew each melody well. The songs were picked to suit her sultry and sophisticated style, and with fresh backing from the orchestra, she projects well her personal approach to a repertoire of familiar standards like What Is This Thing Called Love, Them There Eyes, They Can’t Take That Away from Me and Ain’t Misbehavin’.

Despite having appeared in sixteen movies and numerous coast-to-coast radio and TV shows, work began to be scarce in the ‘60s. Although she continued to be engaged at nightclubs, there didn’t seem to be much room for a singer who didn’t build her act around rock ‘n’ roll. “The situation gets tighter all the time. Recording companies certainly aren’t going out to hear new talent. And I know I haven’t bothered to record in the past five years. I’m what you might call a good, solid ‘half name’. But I know the situation. When they can’t even get a hit for Peggy Lee, what can they do with people like me?,” she explained in 1965.

Despite sporadic appearances in night clubs, after the tragic death of her husband Robert Olson in 1968 she withdrew from the scene. On February 19, 1980, the girl from Mitchell who quickly rose to true stardom in the theatrical world died of lung cancer at the age of 58 in Los Angeles. Gale Robbins has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the motion picture category. It is located at 6510 Hollywood Boulevard.

—Jordi Pujol (Taken from the inside liner notes of FSRV 132)