Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Singer known for cabaret and musicals, famous for Love for Sale and Stormy Weather, with a six-decade career in Paris, London and New York.
On the island
Eight records
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:25Do you feel as if [the people you have known] were all of another age, or are they still very much part of the age?
Oh no, they're part of me, they're part of me. My life is all one sort of thing.
Presenter asks
1:52Why doesn't [age] bother you?
I I don't know, it never has. I was always older from the age of sort of fourteen, fifteen when I was sort of a young girl. Coming up I was um already doing social work with the children, you see, and so I and they all s everybody thought I was three and four years older, and I used to pretend I was as well, you see.
Presenter asks
3:38What have you always looked for in a song? What's important to you?
A lyric you read first and then you read the music. And if the lyric and the music are lovely, then it's a song for me.
Presenter asks
4:24The keepsakes
The book
The luxury
How did [your meeting with Irving Berlin] come about? That was, what, nineteen thirty?
That was nineteen thirty one, actually. I was singing in Cabra in New York. And um, Peggy Hopkins Joyce nobody's old enough to remember her except me, but she was a a great lady of soci uh well, not society, she made her own society, but she married about eight or nine millionaires and she was very, very famous for that. And she used to come into our club and uh she brought me a song one n night and said, uh, There's a Broadway show coming in, Elizabeth, uh and this song is in it. I think you should learn it and uh it it sounds like you, you see. So it was love for sale. So I learned it and by the time the show opened I started singing it. And then a fortnight after the show opened or so, these three men came in just as we were getting re ready to go home, about half past two in the morning. And they called me back uh and said get the boys on the stand, there were only five of us anyhow and I sang Love for Sale for them and they turned out to be raggetts. Ray Goetz was the producer of the show of The New Yorkers, in which the song was, and uh and Monty Woolley, who directed it, and and the other guy was Irving Berlin, you see.
Presenter asks
6:52Was that because they didn't think they could have a black prostitute on Madison Avenue?
That's an event. On Madison Avenue, absolutely, yes. And also they were covering me as well'cause'cause she wouldn't have been. But you could have found that a bit offensive. I could have, but I didn't think of it that way,'cause I knew they didn't. But they were worried about an audience, you see.
Presenter asks
21:10Why didn't you feel that you could stand up for your people? You came from a poor black community.
No, I came from a poor black community, but it was like Soho. I mean, we were mixed. The biggest amount of people there were Irish. The second amount were Italians. And the third amount were the Negroes, you see. And then we mixed up the Swiss and the Germans and everything else. It was a marvellous neighborhood. I never felt that I was different than anybody else. I refused.
“Oh no, they're part of me, they're part of me. My life is all one sort of thing.”
“That's an event. On Madison Avenue, absolutely, yes. And also they were covering me as well'cause'cause she wouldn't have been. But you could have found that a bit offensive. I could have, but I didn't think of it that way,'cause I knew they didn't. But they were worried about an audience, you see.”
“I suppose uh the joy of some of the joys of my life is when I sing ... and these youngsters ... and uh it sometimes makes makes me cry because uh it's it's so emotionally overwhelming, you know, that these youngsters sort of sixteen, seventeen, up to twenty, and sort of uh adoring you and you can't but feel it, you know.”
“Well, everybody always asks me that. I I don't know, because I stand in the wings absolutely shivering. And until I walk into that spot, then I know I belong to the those who are there, and I just give them what I've got, that's all.”