Word: lillian
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...singer, Lillian Russell might have cut a minor swath at the Metropolitan. Trained in opera from infancy, she claimed to be able to negotiate high Cs eight times a performance, seven performances a week. But when Nellie Melba told Lillian to stick to the music halls, where her reign was absolute, she took the advice...
Phonograph antiquarians, who hunt for sacred if scratchy records out of the dear dead past, had a wonderful prize offered them last week. It was a 1912 disc of the late great Lillian Russell, singing the hit of her career, Come Down, My Evenin' Star. Copies were issued by Manhattan's Collectors Record Shop. The recording showed its age. The sound of the little string orchestra that accompanied Lillian had the antique flavor of the wormholes in a Gutenberg Bible or the patina on a Hellenistic bronze...
...what surprised youngish musicians was the fact that beauteous Lillian Russell was also obviously a woman of voice. She took her high notes with operatic aplomb, turned her phrases with the delicacy of a diva. There was even a hint in the recording of the lump in Lillian's throat which she frequently got when she sang this particular song. That catch in the throat had a history...
Paris Green. Come Down, My Evenin' Star was the work of a tunesmith named John ("Honey") Stromberg, who wrote for the revues at the old Weber & Fields Music Hall when David Warfield, Fay Templeton, DeWolf Hopper and Willie Collier were among its stars. When Lillian made her debut there in 1899 in a travesty on The Girl from Maxim's, Honey Stromberg was her musical director. For four years he wrote his finest tunes for her. One day in 1902 Honey, an acute sufferer from chronic rheumatism, was reported seriously ill at his home in Freeport, Long Island...
...half of a recruiting act which played Manhattan vaudeville theaters. Federal officers seized copies of the song It'll Be a Hot Time for the Old Boys when the Young Men go to War. Notable entertainers who volunteered to go overseas were John Drew, Billie Burke, Jane Cowl. Lillian Russell, Walter Damrosch. Maude Adams...