Ada Delroy – Australian Serpentine Dancer and Vaudeville Actress

MISS ADA DELROY

Ada Delroy, the adopted sister of Music Hall comedian James Bell, was born in Halifax, Yorkshire England. Taught dancing by Bell, and taken in by the theatrical family at the age of 12, she made her first ever stage appearance as Fatima in a professional production of Bluebeard - a big feature being her "Cobra di Capello" dance.

Often described in his day as a "Senegambian" comedian or a “blackface” comic, James Bell was raised in Lancashire, England, and went on to become a specialist on the Ethiopian castanets ("bones") while being equally adept at singing, dancing, banjo  playing  and  comedy sketch work.

James Bell and Ada Delroy toured Australia for two years with Harry Rickards Company in 1888 to 1890, before undertaking a two year world tour with Baldwin's Butterfly Company travelling through the USA, Middle-East, Far East, China, Japan, South Africa and Europe.  

ADA'S SISTER-IN-LAW

They returned to Australia in February 1895 under Rickards management, this time with Bells wife, Alice who went under the stage name of the "White Mahatma".  Madame Bell had been performing professionally for over 16 years. Her act was believed to have been advertised as "Somnomistic Dream Visions" and involved audience participation, whereby selected  individuals would write  down questions on folded  paper earlier in the evening  (which  they  retained).  She would then answer them later in the evening.  

By then a specialist Serpentine dancer, Ada Delroy was routinely billed as the world's greatest Terpsichorean artist when she established the Ada Delroy Company which made its debut in Singleton, New South Wales, in June in 1885. The initial line-up comprised of 12 artists including James Opie, Gertie McLeod, Tom Bergin and mesmerist Dr Richard Rowe. 

The troupe toured Australia and New Zealand in late 1897, then did a two and a half year world tour, returning to Australia in mid-1900. The company then remained in the Antipodes until around 1909, with its principals also appearing with Harry Rickards, James Brennan and the Conrad Power Company.

James Bell's last known engagement was at Brennan's National Amphitheatre, Sydney in December 1908. The following year he was appointed manager of the Melbourne Opera House by Harry Rickards. Ada Delroy's last known performance is believed to have been with Carroll's Vaudeville Entertainment in Melbourne in 1915. 

 A keen cyclist, Ada Delroy was often featured in cycling news during her Australian tours, and claimed to be the first lady cyclist in both Australia and Ireland. James Bell was a member of both  the NSW and Victorian cycling leagues and the theatre the company reportedly toured with 9 bikes during the 1890s.

Delroy and Bell married in 1908 following the death of Alice Bell the previous year.

Ada Delroy was also a land speculator in real estate in Perth in the mid to late-1890s, selling a parcel of land at Cottesloe known as the Ada Delroy Estate.

AUTHOR KAZ COOKE

Ada’s forgotten life story has now been brilliantly re-imagined and fictionalized by Australian author, Kaz Cooke. Read her new boook Ada and you’ll enter an all-but forgotten world of clairvoyants, greasepaint and curtain calls, where the glamour of the stage and the pull of touring on the road will instantly enthrall you. 

It all started when she came across a photo of a woman in a theatre scrapbook while researching a project at the State Library of Victoria on objects people wear to say who they are.

Kaz says:  In it, she’s wearing ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ – a giant hat, ostrich feathers, bows, braid, butterfly brooches, a giant diamond pendant and her name spelled out in diamonds. It was captioned ‘Ada Delroy’.

I found out she had been a dancer, singer and comedian with her own troupe, the Ada Delroy Company, and I began making a timeline of Ada’s travels and reviews of her shows, using the Australian newspaper archives the National Library of Australia’s digital collection, and the sister archive for New Zealand . Often it took scores of ‘reviews’ to piece together a whole act, sentence-by-sentence; here a name of the song, there a tiny description of part of a comedy sketch costume.

The plan evolved that I would write a novel about Ada’s life – and that everyone in the book, including Ada, would be a real person. I visited the family archivist of a branch of the Bell family troupe’s descendants. Joy Bell from NSW generously shared information on the Bell family, whom had adopted Ada after she was orphaned at 12 in a Lancashire mill town and put her in the family troupe. Joy had wonderful photos of the Ada Delroy Company on tour in India. Other photos were found at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, the State Library picture collections, and on one miraculous occasion, on Pinterest.

At the Library I could ‘order in’ from the collection and look at objects from Ada’s era: a 19th century wedding gown (mauve) in two pieces, jewellery, an actress’s back-stage travel iron  (heated by a reservoir of methylated spirits that you would light with a ‘vesta’ match or a flaming twist of paper transferred from a dressing-room fireplace). No wonder so many theatres burned down in those days!

I was amazed to see online all the digitized pages of a scrapbook kept by Ada’s rather bonkers boss during the early 1890s, Professor Baldwin. This was a record of the Baldwin tour with the Bells when Ada debuted her signature Serpentine dance in England. Ada stole all her dances from Loïe Fuller, who became a famous star at the Folies Bergères. The scrapbook is part of the Houdini collection at the Harry Ransom Centre, at the University of Texas in Austin. More ferreting in the State Library of Victoria turned up the gas bill for the backstage and stage lights from the same year Ada performed at the Bourke St Opera House Tivoli theatre in 1895.

Official archivists in Auckland helped me decipher a relevant, scandalous 1912 divorce case’s exhibit letters, written in a dreadful hand, in purple, soluble pencil and smudged with tears (or whiskey). I consulted modern experts on genealogy, tuberculosis, larrikins, tin-silk frocks and sea slugs. That was all part of the fun for me, flexing my old journalism muscles and just satisfying my own curiosity. 

I read novels of the time, and histories of clairvoyants, spiritualists and ‘black-face’ minstrel entertainers, and consulted slang dictionaries for Lancashire and 19th century theatre, Australianisms of the day, and the theatre history books by Aussie experts Frank van Straten and Mimi Colligan.  

I looked at photos and read accounts of steam ship and carriage travel, and Melbourne places, faces and vaudevillians from 1888 to 1910. My nephew George was dispatched to the State Library of WA to find the original brochure advertising the auction of land called the Ada Delroy estate; that’s how we found out Jimbell St in Perth, which still survives, is named after Ada’s husband, Jim Bell.

I was lucky enough to jump a discount flight to New York with 12 hours to spare so I could watch a performance by choreographer and dancer Jody Sperling, who interprets the dances of Loïe Fuller, wearing re-created and constructed Serpentine costumes. I was able to speak with her about how Ada might have felt performing those original dances in the costume made from 100 yards of silk. Later, I visited the dressing room under the Theatre Royal in Hobart where Ada once changed into that costume.

I convinced a shopkeeper at the Block Arcade in Melbourne to let me down into the catacombs underneath to explore, so I could set a scene there. I didn’t want to stop researching, but with a head full of images and facts and ideas, after two years of research, it was time to write.

I didn’t use every photo or reference everything I’d read or investigated, but it all combined to help me imagine my way into Ada’s life and give her a voice. I hope I’ve done her proud.

 

Ada is a show girl and a storyteller with a sense of humour and a lot of things to say. Ada is a funny, yet poignant novel about an extraordinary woman who made the very best of everything life threw at her. 

You soon fall in love with her for speaking the way she does:

‘It’s not every day a handsome young man appears on your doorstep to ask if you’re a respectable woman…’

Kaz Cooke brings Ada Delroy and her famous vaudeville troupe back to life while telling us the backstage tales of how she entertained royalty, and the general public alike with her witty jokes, illusions, and breath-taking dances.

‘I had a diamond pendant near as big as an emu egg off the Maharajah of What's-His-Name. They named a racehorse after me, and a pigeon and a potato soup on an Orient steamship.'

‘I’ll tell you what I loved about being a theatrical. You’re a custodian of magic, a purveyor of glamour, a repository of mystery. You’re someone.’

'I was enchanting, and indefatigable, and dainty, and all the other words they find to avoid saying 'beautiful'. The word they used the most was 'piquant'. Makes you feel like chutney.' - Ada Delroy

A former reporter and cartoonist, Kaz Cooke is also the author of the bestselling books Up The Duff, Kidwrangling, Girl Stuff, Girl Stuff 8–12, Women’s Stuff, and the children's picture books Wanda Linda Goes Berserk and The Terrible Underpants

Find out more  www.kazcooke.com.au

BUY YOUR COPY OF ADA FROM OUR AMAZON AFFILIATE BOOKSTORE & HELP KEEP OUR WEBSITE ONLINE AND FREE FOR ALL TO READ - THANK YOU

Adele Astaire – From American Vaudeville to English Aristocracy

The dancing partner who made Fred Astaire famous isn’t the one most people remember. Adele Astaire was Fred Astaire's older sister. They had a 27-year vaudeville and theatre career which began when he was five and she was eight. Adele was considered to be the better dancer out of the two but today her story has faded into obscurity. They starred in 11 stage musicals together but Adele gave up performing in 1932 to marry Lord Charles Cavendish. She became a member of the British Aristocracy; while her brother Fred went on to gain Hollywood fame with his new dancing partner Ginger Rogers.

Born Adele Marie Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska in 1897, she and Fred were the children of Johanna Geilus an American-born Lutheran of German descent, and Frederic "Fritz" Emanuel Austerlitz an Austrian Roman Catholic brewer of Jewish descent who had left Austria for the USA in 1895. They adopted the more American-sounding name 'Astaire' after trying several variations on the original family surname.  Adele’s younger brother Fred was born on May 10, 1899.

The Astaire's were home schooled and their mother was manager, promoter and chaperone

except for about a year or so when they had to take a year off because Adele had matured and Fred was to small for Adele to perform with. During this time they actually went to school in Highwood, New Jersey.

Their parents sent Fred along to Adele’s dance classes, so he could keep her company, but he got just as interested in learning the steps himself. A teacher suggested that the two children might have a stage career if they were properly trained for it, so the family moved from Omaha to New York. Adele, Fred and their mother lived in a boarding house, while Fred Senior returned to Omaha to work. The two

children began attending the Alviene Master School of the Theatre and Academy of Cultural Arts.

By 1905 Adele Astaire had established a vaudeville act with her younger brother, Fred. The Astaire’s appeared in their first show in New York in 1912, and had their first triumph on Broadway in 1917, with ''Over the Top'' at the Winter Garden. In 1923, they also found success on the London stage in Stop Flirting. They were an immediate hit and settled into a West End run of 418 performances, returning to London throughout the 1920s.

Adele was the bigger and more charismatic star and it was she who usually got the better notices of the two, for her vivacity and natural comic timing. Fred was the more serious and disciplined younger brother.

One of the steps, incorporated into most of their shows, was the “oompah trot” or the runaround, where Adele and Fred, side by side, would ape riding in huge circles on an imaginary bicycle. Audiences went wild for this particular antic, especially in London, where the bright-eyed, exuberant Americans were welcomed even more enthusiastically than in their own country.

Peter Pan creator J. M. Barrie asked Adele to act in his play but contractual reasons forced her to turn down the part.

Back in New York the duo appeared in Jerome Kern's The Bunch and Judy (1922), and then they starred in Gershwin brothers' first Broadway collaborations Lady, Be Good and Funny Face. Fred had known George Gershwin since 1916, when he went to the composer looking for a vaudeville number. They had vowed they’d work together some day; that day came on December 1, 1924, when the Astaire’s headlined George and Ira’s first full-length New York musical, “Lady, Be Good!” Playing a brother-and-sister dance team down on their luck, the Astaire’s had found the perfect vehicle for their talents. George not only provided them with some of their best tunes, he suggested a couple of dance steps to help Fred with the ending for “The Half of It, Dearie, Blues.” Fred got his first solo, while the romantic end of things was held down by his sister and the leading man. It proved to be such a felicitous match that critic Alexander Woollcott later wrote: 

 “I do not know whether Gershwin was born into this world to write rhythms for Fred Astaire’s feet or whether Fred Astaire was born into this world to show how the Gershwin music should really be danced.”

The Astaire’s followed up that success with another Gershwin smash, “Funny Face” (1927), where Adele got to introduce “‘S Wonderful.” When the show made its inevitable visit to London, Adele met a besotted stage-door Johnnie from the British aristocracy and was soon falling head over heels in love. The romance was something of an international sensation, as Adele kept putting off accepting Lord Charles's marriage proposal until she had one final hit show.

After a successful stint with Fred in the revue The Band Wagon (1931) on Broadway, Adele Astaire retired from the stage. It was one of the finest revues of the period, with an impeccable Schwartz-Dietz score including “A New Sun in the Sky,” in which Fred dressed for a night on the town in an attempt to beef up his stage presence so that his transition into a solo career would be easier.

On May 9, 1932, Adele married Lord Charles Cavendish, the second son of the 9th Duke of Devonshire and they moved to Ireland, where they lived at Lismore Castle and she was known as Lady Cavendish. 

At the time of their engagement she had been performing in Florenz Ziegfeld's ''Smiles,'' which received less than happy reviews when it opened in 1930. However, Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times singled out the Astaire’s for praise:

''Strictly speaking, the Astaire’s are dancers. But they have more than one string to their fiddle. With them, dancing is comedy of manners, very much in the current mode. Free of show-shop trickery, they plunge with spirit into the midst of the frolic. Once to the tune of 'If I Were You, Love,' with a squealing German band accompaniment, they give dancing all the mocking grace of improvisation with droll dance inflections and with comic changes of pace. Adele Astaire is also an impish comedian; she can give sad lines a gleam of infectious good-nature. Slender, agile and quick-witted, the Astaire’s are ideal for the American song-and-dance stage.''

Fred said of his sister on her retirement, ''She was a great artist and inimitable, and the grandest sister anybody could have.''

 “Fred struggled on without Adele for a while,” wrote P. G. Wodehouse,” but finally threw his hand in and disappeared. There is a rumour that he turned up in Hollywood. It was the best the poor chap could hope for after losing his brilliant sister.”

Adele and Lord Charles Cavendish

The marriage of Lord and Lady Charles, though happy, was marked by tragedy. A daughter was born in 1933, and died the same day. Two years later, twin sons, who were born prematurely, died within hours of their births. She was to have no more children.

After Fred Astaire's success in Hollywood, Adele gave serious consideration in 1935 to making a musical film there. She visited Hollywood and appeared in January 1936 on the Music Variety Show, but she admitted to feeling intimidated by her brother's reputation. During their partnership, Fred, whose perfectionism earned him the nickname "Moaning Minnie" from her, had always been the dominant creative force. 

In 1937 Adele began filming in England with Jack Buchanan and Maurice Chevalier but withdrew after two days. She later recalled: "Oh boy, if my brother Fred sees this—I'm gone".

 

During World War II, at the urging of her husband, Adele worked at a famous Red Cross canteen in London, the Rainbow Corner, helping out at the information desk, dancing with G.I.'s and shopping and writing letters for them. To the letters she signed herself, ''Adele Astaire (Fred's sister).''

Lord Charles fell ill from a liver damage due to long-term alcoholism. This made him an invalid and led to his death on March 23, 1944, aged just 38.  Afterwards, Adele turned down an offer from Irving Berlin to return to the stage in Annie Get Your Gun. 

Three years later, on April 20, 1947, Adele Cavendish married her second husband, Col. Kingman Douglass, an American investment banker with Dillon Read & Company. He had also been an Air Force officer who became an Assistant Director of the Central Intelligence Agency for two years. Adele had originally met him while working at the Rainbow Corner. It was his second marriage.

Kingman Douglass died in 1971. Afterwards, Adele lived in Phoenix, Arizona, and continued, until 1979, to summer at the castle in Ireland she had shared with her first husband.

Unlike her brother, Adele was extremely gregarious and took great delight in shocking friends and strangers alike. Even when in later years beset by illness, she had enormous recuperative powers, and, according to her stepson Kingman Douglass Jr., "she soon would be up and in Marine-type English telling what she thought of the world."

In 1972, Fred and Adele Astaire were inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

Adele Astaire died in Scottsdale Memorial Hospital, Scottsdale, Arizona, after suffering a stroke. She was 84. Her remains were interred in the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California. 

Built in 1905, the Gottlieb Storz House in Omaha includes the "Adele and Fred Astaire Ballroom" on the top floor, which is the only memorial to their Omaha roots.

At the suggestion of Roddy McDowall, Astaire donated her papers and memorabilia—amounting to several trunks of material—to the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.

There is no known film record of Adele performing or dancing, but she made eight audio recordings, all duets with Fred, George Vollaire or Bernard Clifton.

The BBC One Show recently featured the fascinating stoty of Adele Astaire in the following video:

 Enjoy the magic of Adele singing "S'Wonderful with Bernard Clifton in 1928

 

Vaughn De Leath: The 1st Lady of 1920’s Radio

Female American singer Vaughn De Leath was was a household name in the 1920's earning herself the nicknames "The Original Radio Girl" and the "First Lady of Radio." Nowadays she is mainly regarded as an obscure recording artist, but her fascinating life story and her outstanding contribution both to modern music and to Radio Broadcasting deserve much greater recognition. 

De Leath was an early female exponent of the style of vocal singing known as “crooning”.  One of her later hit songs, "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" recorded in 1927 achieved everlasting fame when it was covered by Elvis Presley in 1960. She also originally recorded “I Want To Be Loved By You” - a song that was later made famous by the Hollywood movie star Marilyn Munroe. 

Leonore Vonderlieth was born in the town of Mount Pulaski, Illinois on September 26, 1894. Her parents were George W Vonderlieth, the son of German immigrants Henry Vonderlieth and Catherina Vonderlieth, and Katherine “Katie” Vonderlieth - formerly Miller - who had been a local musician and singer before her marriage. Leonore also had an older sister called Alma but sadly their father died on October 2nd 1901 when his youngest daughter was just 7 years old. 

At the age of 12, Leonore relocated to Los Angeles with her mother and sister, where she finished high school and studied music. Whilst at Mills College, she began writing songs, but she soon dropped out of her studies to pursue a singing career and adopted the stage name of "Vaughn De Leath." which was a play on her German surname. Her vocals ranged from soprano to deep contralto and were well adapted to the emerging, less restrictive jazz vocal style of the era.

The decade named as “The Roaring Twenties” took place in a fast paced, ever- changing world, where automobiles began to roll off the production lines in their thousands and astonished crowds gathered to see the exciting new 'moving pictures'. To prosper or just survive in this innovative and creative decade, one had to be adaptable, intuitive, enterprising and talented. Vaughn De Leath was all of these things and more - as can be heard by the extraordinary breadth of her musical repertoire and her flexible singing style. Such talents were instantly recognized in a survivor and achiever. She was an “all American girl” completely in tune with the modern times.

In January 1920, inventor and radio pioneer Lee DeForest brought her to the tiny studio of his station, 2XG, located in New York City's World's Tower, where she sang "Swanee River" in a live broadcast. This was a whole year before the first broadcasting station went on the air in an experimental way. It was very crude broadcasting in 1920, compared with the kind of work done only seven years later, but when Vaughn de Leath sang her jazzy tunes to satisfy a whim of De Forest, transmission was much cruder. She recalls:  

    "The studio at that time was a very small room, hardly any bigger than a fair-sized closet, and the broadcasting was done by means of an instrument which greatly resembled an old fashioned phonograph horn."

Although this was not, as is sometimes wrongly stated, the first time a female vocalist had  broadcast live, Vaughn nevertheless established herself as a skilled radio performer whilst Radio broadcasting was still in it’s infancy. De Leath wasn't the first female singer to broadcast for Lee De Forest either - a "contralto singer named Van Boos" (Eugenia Farrar) sang "I Love You Truly" for him over an experimental New York City station in 1907.

 De Forest would later say about Vaughn De Leath:

 "She was an instant success. Her voice and her cordial, unassuming microphone presence were ideally suited to the novel task. Without instruction she seemed to sense exactly what was necessary in song and patter to successfully put herself across".

Having been advised that high notes sung in her natural soprano might shatter the fragile vacuum tubes of her carbon microphone's amplifier, De Leath switched to a deep contralto and in the process invented "crooning", which became the dominant popular vocal singing style for the next three decades. 

By 1921, in the formative years of commercial radio, De Leath began singing at WJZ, in Newark, New Jersey (a station later known as WABC in New York City). She also performed on the New York stage in the early to mid-1920s, but radio became her primary medium, and she made a real name for herself as a radio entertainer. She was able to accompany herself on banjo, ukulele, guitar, and piano, and could literally entertain the listeners for hours at a time when there was an excess of programming time and very little recorded material to go on the air with. De Leath also had a highly versatile range of styles, and as the material required, could adapt to become a serious balladeer, a playful girl, a vampish coquette, or a vaudeville comedian.

Her recording career began in 1921. Over the next decade she recorded hundreds of songs for a number of labels, including Edison, Columbia, Okeh, Gennett, Victor, and Brunswick. She occasionally recorded for major label subsidiaries under various pseudonyms such as Gloria Geer, Mamie Lee, Sadie Green, Betty Brown, Nancy Foster, Marion Ross, Glory Clark, Angelina Marco, and Gertrude Dwyer. She literally appeared under one name or another for just about every single US record label around in the 1920s.

The roaring twenties were also known as "The Jazz Years”. The first jazz recording had been made in 1917 by the white jazz band The Original Dixieland Jazz Band and in 1920 it was the black blues singer, Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues”, selling 75,000 copies in Harlem within a month that set the ball rolling for blues records too. But in a racially segregated USA the records of black artists were placed into what the industry then categorised as “Race Recordings” allotting them to issue series of their own. This was black music for a black audience but through artists like Vaughn de Leath the songs could also reach a broader white audience and blur those musical boundaries.

Listening to her recordings and hearing the many musical and subject references to the south, it is difficult to believe that Vaughn De Leath was not born or associated with the South in any way. I Love The Land Of Old Black Joe, was one of several "Southern" style songs that she recorded including Is Ya?, Honey, Honey (l’se A Waitin’ Jes Fo’ You) and Stay In Your Own Backyard and the novelty song Blow, Blow, Blow On Your Old Harmonica, Joe 

Though not mimicking the stereotyped southern black accent Vaughn still accentuated a “slight southern drawl” in her light hearted “popular” songs such as  As Long I’m With You and Since I Found You. These recordings are tantalizing in the way that the listener is left wondering how much of the performance is pure theatre and how much is a true reflection of her character; carefree, humorous and determined? 

Similar clues to her wonderfully comic character are found in  When The Pussywillow Whispers To The Catnip which was also known as The Whisper Song. This comedy song proved to be very popular in 1927 with several recordings of the number being released in the same year by other artists, including Cliff "Ukelele" Ike who had recorded it in the previous month to her release. It’s slightly surreal subject matter and silly sound effects border on the zany and one cannot help but wonder what could have happened had it got into the hands of Spike Jones a few years later.

Dancing The Devil Away was a snappy “hot” jazz number which Vaughn recorded in the company of Don Voorhees And His Earl Carroll Vanities Orchestra - under whose name the record was released. Vaughn also provided the vocals for the flip side of the record The Same Old Moon. 

De Leath's “Crooning” style is beautifully demonstrated on the delicate There’s A Cradle in Carolina. The song is that of the restless, displaced, wandering hobo who at “the end of the road” has journeyed so far only to find himself staring at failure and dreams of returning to the comfort of home. The record was evidently a hit with Gene Austin, Ben Bernie and Nat Shilkret, including the song into their recordings within days of Vaughn’s release.

The knock-about novelty duet with Jack Kaufman I’m Gonna Dance Wit’ De Guy Wot Brung Me (also known as The Gum Chewers Song) was originally written by Walter O’ Keefe with music (for ukulele) by Harry Archer. This wonderful comedy song is made all the more humorous by Vaughn’s attempt to sound like someone from the Bronx when she actually sounds more like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins! 

The gloriously catchy hit song I Can’t Give You Anything But Love had featured earlier in the year in what was to become the longest running black musical of the twenties, “Blackbirds of 1928”. It opened in May of the same year, featuring Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson and singer, Adelaide Hall. The song was written by Dorothy Fields, daughter of the musical’s producer Lew Fields, with music by Jimmy McHugh. Vaughn De Leath recorded it with Ben Selvin's Knickerbockers!

I’ve Got A Feeling I’m Falling was originally written by Billy Rose with music by Thomas “Fats” WaIler. This popular song with it’s Waller trade mark composition does have a diluted jazz feel and Vaughn’s crooning style gives the song great justice. It seems to have been first recorded by Beb Bernie and his Roosevelt Orchestra in late March 1929. “Fats” WaIler, himself, left the piece alone until August, by which time several artists had recorded this hit including Gene Austin and Miff Moler. He did record it was as one of his many piano instrumentals which he then re-recorded six years later, again only as an instrumental.

With her versatile singing style Vaughn approached the moods of her song with great effect, from the lively Marianna to the melancholic love song My Dear which is set against the background of what sounds like the accompaniment of the popular Hawaiian guitarist of the day Frank Ferrara. Her best-known recording over the years was probably the version of "The Man I Love" she sang with Paul Whiteman's Concert Orchestra for Columbia.

De Leath also recorded songs for silent films - she composed the title song for the 1922 silent film Oliver Twist. An article in Spotlight's Glare in The Music Trades (November 11, 1922) described the link with the Jackie Coogan movie as "One of the biggest tie ups ever undertaken in connection with a picture feature song".

De Leath's recording accompanists included some of the major jazz musicians of the 1920s, including cornetist Red Nichols, trombonist Miff Mole, guitarists Dick McDonough and Eddie Lang, and bandleader Paul Whiteman. She demonstrated a high level of instrumental ability on the ukulele, and occasionally accompanied herself on recordings, including on the hit 1925 hit Ukulele Lady, which was covered by Bette Midler. Vuaghns version was later used in the 1999 film, The Cider House Rules

In 1923, Vaughn became one of the first women in America to manage a radio station - WDT in New York City, on which she also performed:

Boston Herald, July 29, 1923

FAMOUS  'RADIO  GIRL'  NOW  OWN  DIRECTOR: 

Miss  De  Leath  Extends  Versatility  as  Manager  of  WDT

Vaughn De Leath, so popular with radio fans through her frequent appearances before the microphone, is about to challenge the approval of radio audiences in a new role--that of studio and program manager of station WDT, now opening for general broadcasting.

Rated among the leading women composers of the country, her songs and musical scores are known to all lovers of good music. As a recording artist, her phonographic records have an enormous circulation, marked by an unusually even distribution over the entire country, due, no doubt, in a large measure, to the great range of her contralto voice (three octaves) and its quality of sympathetic appeal.

This young woman's remarkable versatility is further shown by her high rank as a piano player (not the mechanical kind) and by her success as a director of her own band and orchestra, or more than 60 pieces, as well as her own popularity as a concert singer and recitalist.

Sadly her career as a Director of a Radio Station did not progress any further than that - the station eventually became defunct and Vaughn simply went back to singing again.

She was one of the first American entertainers to broadcast to Europe via a transatlantic radio transmission. The Wireless Age (1923) presented an interview with "Vaughn De Leath, The Original Radio Girl", which recounted the 12:30AM December 9, 1922 WJZ radio broadcast from New York to London.

 The Star-Spangled Banner burst upon the air like the coming of a cyclone. ... And then a voice came in "WJZ - WJZ - WJZ." ... His Majesty's Consul-General in New York then spoke briefly, expressing the hope that radio will be the means of cementing the English- speaking peoples of the world even more closely. Then Vaughn De Leath sang.

This was the first confirmed trans-Atlantic reception of a U.S. broadcasting station ever. 

One of her last newspapers interviews was with The Zanesville Ohio Times in 1927 where she reflected back on her career and described her love of singing on the Radio:

    "I never fail to feel a shiver of joy when I enter a broadcasting room," she says. "My enthusiasm for it is boundless, for each time I feel it is a new experience. My underlying thought always is that, somewhere or other in the extensive ether, there is someone who has never heard me before.That, together with the thought of my faithful listeners, gives me an incentive always to do my best."

 Still one to break broadcasting boundaries, in 1928 she appeared on an experimental television broadcast, and later became a special guest for the debut broadcast of Voice of Firestone Radio Hour.

She made her final nationwide network performances in the early 1930s and in her waning years, she made radio appearances on local New York stations, including WBEN in Buffalo. 

For most of her career Vaughn DeLeath had billed herself as "the First Lady of Radio," but in 1931 she sued singer Kate Smith for also using this name. Smith withdrew, and went back to using her other trademark nickname "the Sweet Songbird of the South”. However it was a bittersweet victory, as after a final recording session for Eli Oberstein's Crown label in 1931, Vaughn De Leath disappeared from the radio and the music business altogether. 

Little is known about what happened in De Leath's personal life after 1931 but from records we know she had two husbands. Her first was Leon Geer, an artist whom she had married in New York on 17 April 1924 and then divorced in 1935. She subsequently wed Jewish musician Irwin Rosenbloom, on June 9, 1936 at Bel Air Methodist Episcopal church, Maryland. Four years later on May 20, 1941 in Reno Nevada she was granted a divorce from Rosenbloom on the grounds of extreme cruelty. Rosenbloom went on to marry the infamous Opera Soprano, Lydia Locke in the 1950’s. (See Separate blog post on Lydia Locke for more details)

  

With the decline of her radio performances, no more recordings being made and two failed marriages behind her, tragically Vaughn De Leath went from being the pioneering "First Lady of Radio" to an alcoholic living in absolute poverty within the space of just 10 short years.

She was only in her late 40’s when she died on May 28, 1943 in Buffalo, New York and her ashes were taken buried in her childhood home of Mount Pulaski, Illinois. 

Her lasting legacy was that she left behind a wonderful collection of songs and music from the early days of recording and broadcasting, which we can still enjoy today. 

©The History Researcher / Chrissy Hamlin