Alice Faye

Although may be a little forgotten after all these years, Alice Faye was one of the few movie stars to walk away from stardom at the peak of her career in the 1940s. Ms. Faye's warm, husky contralto and demure sexuality in ''Tin Pan Alley,'' ''Hello, Frisco, Hello'' and ''Alexander's Ragtime Band'' made her one of Hollywood's top 10 moneymaking stars in 1938 and 1939. Under contract to 20th Century Fox for a little over a decade, during which she made 32 movies, Ms. Faye walked out in 1945 after Darryl Zanuck, the studio's leader, chopped up her scenes in ''Fallen Angel'' to highlight the performance of a younger Fox star, Linda Darnell. While an accomplished actress with such film hits as In Old Chicago, Rose of Washington Square and Lillian Russell, she was also a talented singer. Irving Berlin was once quoted as saying that he would choose Faye over any other singer to introduce his songs, and George Gershwin and Cole Porter called her the "best female singer in Hollywood in 1937". During her years as a musical superstar (from the 1930s to the early 1940s), Alice Faye managed to introduce 23 songs to the Hit Parade and was the first female crooner and equivalent to Bing Crosby. In May 1941, she married bandleader Phil Harris. Their marriage, one of the most successful in Hollywood, became a plotline in the hit radio comedy, The Jack Benny Program, where for 16 years Harris was a regular cast member. in 1946. The Harrises' gently tart comedy sketches made them the show's stars. By 1948 the show became a strictly situation comedy with a music interlude each from husband and wife and was renamed The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show.