The Full Biography
Betty Grable. Actress. Dancer. The Fox blonde whose back-to-the-camera pin-up became a war’s household saint.
This is her story.
The image most people still carry is not a close-up. It is a swimsuit, a white bathing cap, and a look over the right shoulder, hands on hips, painted for a studio still that escaped the studio. The year was 1943. Frank Powolny took the photograph for 20th Century-Fox. GIs put it in lockers and on the walls of barracks from Italy to the Pacific. What the still cannot show is Elizabeth Ruth Grable of St. Louis, a mother-managed child hoofer, a decade of near-misses, a stretch as Hollywood’s highest-paid woman, two daughters, a marriage to a trumpeter that burned money, and a last act on the stage that ended in a Santa Monica hospital at fifty-six.
She was born on December 18, 1916, in St. Louis. Her mother, Lillian, decided early that the child would dance. Lessons, contests, a move west. Hollywood in the early 1930s was full of mothers with that plan. Most of the daughters became extra work and a bus ticket home. Betty got into the chorus — including Busby Berkeley’s world around Eddie Cantor’s Whoopee! — and then into a long stretch of parts that did not stick. RKO, Goldwyn, Paramount. Cute, blonde, replaceable. She said she became a star for two reasons, and she was standing on them. The joke is hers. The labor under it is not a joke.
The door is Fox, 1940. Alice Faye, the lot’s musical queen, was pregnant. Down Argentine Way needed a lead who could dance, smile, and not panic in Technicolor. Grable took the picture. Moon Over Miami, Song of the Islands, Springtime in the Rockies, Coney Island, Pin Up Girl, The Dolly Sisters, Mother Wore Tights. The formula was honest: color, legs, a plot thin enough to let her move. Darryl Zanuck’s studio insured those legs with Lloyd’s of London for a million dollars. It was a publicity stunt that happened to be true about the ledger. In 1943 she was the top box-office star in the country. For several years running she was among the ten. During the war that made her something stranger than a movie star. She was mail. She was a reason to finish a tour and go to a theater that still had American light in it.
The over-the-shoulder still was not her most difficult work. It was her most consequential. Fox had taken it as a routine cheesecake. The Office of War Information and the men themselves turned it into a civilian relic. She answered mail. She sold bonds. She did not pretend the photograph was a Stanislavski exercise. She knew what it was for. She also knew, with a clarity other actresses would envy, that a body can be a contract and a cage at the same time.
I became a star for two reasons, and I’m standing on them.Betty Grable
In 1943 she married Harry James, the trumpeter, after an earlier marriage to the former child star Jackie Coogan had already taught her that a famous husband is not a plan. She and James had two daughters, Victoria and Jessica. The marriage lasted twenty-two years and was, by every grown account, loud with money, drink, and other people. They divorced in 1965. She did not write a long confession. She went back to work that did not require Zanuck’s permission.
The turn is the 1950s, when Fox’s musical machine aged out and Marilyn Monroe — whom Grable treated decently on How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) — inherited the blonde account. Grable could have played bitter. She played professional. When the pictures thinned she took nightclubs and then the stage: Hello, Dolly! on the road, a star who still knew how to hit the back wall without a close-up. The second fame is not the pin-up. The second fame is a woman who outlived her own poster and declined to become a joke about it.
The Fox ledger is thicker than the swimsuit. Before Alice Faye’s pregnancy opened the door, Grable had already been a Goldwyn Girl and a Paramount contract player: chorus work around Eddie Cantor’s Whoopee!, bits that did not stick, a decade of being cute and replaceable. Down Argentine Way (1940), with Don Ameche and Carmen Miranda, is the picture that made the lot need her. Then the run that paid the studio’s bills: Tin Pan Alley with Faye; Moon Over Miami; A Yank in the R.A.F. opposite Tyrone Power; I Wake Up Screaming, a rare noir that let her play fear instead of only shine; Song of the Islands; Footlight Serenade; Springtime in the Rockies; Coney Island; Sweet Rosie O’Grady; Pin Up Girl (1944); Four Jills in a Jeep; Diamond Horseshoe; The Dolly Sisters with June Haver; The Shocking Miss Pilgrim; Mother Wore Tights (1947), with Dan Dailey, among the best of the formula; That Lady in Ermine; When My Baby Smiles at Me; Preston Sturges’s The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949), a western gag that did not quite land; Wabash Avenue; My Blue Heaven; Call Me Mister; Meet Me After the Show; The Farmer Takes a Wife.
Darryl Zanuck’s studio insured the legs with Lloyd’s of London for a million dollars. It was a publicity stunt that happened to be true about the ledger. In 1943 she was the top box-office star in the country. For several years running she sat among the ten. In 1946 and 1947 the Treasury numbers put her among the highest-paid women in the United States. The over-the-shoulder still Frank Powolny took in 1943 — white swimsuit, bathing cap, look back, hands on hips — escaped the lot. The Office of War Information and the men themselves turned a routine cheesecake into a civilian relic. GIs put it in lockers from Italy to the Pacific. She answered mail. She sold bonds. She did not pretend the photograph was a Stanislavski exercise. She knew what it was for.
How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) is three blondes in CinemaScope: Grable, Monroe, Lauren Bacall. Grable, the outgoing queen, did not spend the picture punishing the incoming one. Crew from that set remembered manners. Three for the Show (1955) and How to Be Very, Very Popular the same year are the last Fox musical weather. The machine had aged out. She left the lot without a tantrum the columns could use. She took Las Vegas, the Copa, summer tents, a live act that still knew how to hit a back wall. In the late 1960s she went on the road in Hello, Dolly!, a star who had learned, late, that a theater cannot crop you at the knee. The poster girl became a woman who outlived her own poster and declined to become a joke about it.
She married Jackie Coogan in 1937; that marriage ended in 1939 and taught her that a famous husband is not a plan. In 1943 she married Harry James, the trumpeter. They had two daughters, Victoria Elizabeth and Jessica. The marriage lasted twenty-two years and was, by every grown account, loud with money, drink, racetracks, and other people. They divorced in 1965. She did not write a long confession. She lived after that with Bob Remick, a younger dancer, until the end. They did not marry. She kept seeing the daughters. She kept taking the bookings that did not require Zanuck’s permission. Friends describe a woman who was funnier and tougher than the swimsuit suggested, which is true of almost every pin-up if you bother to ask the crew.
Six things most people never knew
- The star years were the second try. She had already been in Hollywood most of a decade, in other studios’ chorus lines, before Fox needed a replacement for Alice Faye.
- The million-dollar legs were a publicity policy, not a fairy tale. Lloyd’s wrote the policy. Fox sent out the press release. The box-office numbers are what made the stunt land.
- In 1946 and 1947 she was among the highest-paid women in the United States. The pin-up was the folk image. The tax return was the industrial fact.
- She was kind to Monroe on a shared set. How to Marry a Millionaire is three blondes in widescreen. Grable, the outgoing queen, did not spend the picture punishing the incoming one.
- The marriage to Harry James lasted longer than the Fox throne. Two daughters. A divorce in 1965. She then lived with the dancer Bob Remick until the end. They did not marry.
- The last career was live. Nightclubs and Hello, Dolly! on tour. The poster girl learned, late, that a theater cannot crop you at the knee.
She smoked. The medical file is not a mystery. She kept a home, saw her daughters, and accepted the kind of late bookings that keep a name in the paper without requiring a new close-up. Remick, younger, stayed. Friends describe a woman who was funnier and tougher than the swimsuit suggested, which is true of almost every pin-up if you bother to ask the crew.
The later years
Las Vegas stages, summer stock, the Dolly tours, and a body that had carried a war’s fantasy into middle age: that is the second job. She played the Desert Inn more than once. She took civic auditoriums that still printed “pin-up girl” on the poster and then had to watch her time a joke. She did not get a late masterpiece from Fox. She got, instead, the thing most musical stars are denied — a second audience that paid to hear her in person after the Technicolor had gone home. She played the Desert Inn and the other Strip rooms that still wanted a name from the 1940s who could land a tap combination. She took Hello, Dolly! through the American tents and civic auditoriums that do not have close-ups. She was not trying to become an actress of the Davis school. She was trying to finish the job she had started in a St. Louis dance studio with Lillian in the wings.
Home, after James, was California with Remick: a younger companion who stayed, two adult daughters, a cigarette habit the medical file would not have to invent. She saw Victoria and Jessica. She accepted the kind of late bookings that keep a name in the paper without requiring a new close-up. She did not issue a farewell special. She worked until the lungs quit. In 1972 the diagnosis was lung cancer. She kept dates as long as she could. On July 2, 1973, she died at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. She was fifty-six. The funeral drew the town that had used her and, in its way, loved her. Harry James came. The daughters came. She is buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery. The Powolny still did not attend. It was already in the archives, the documentaries, the dorm rooms of another war’s grandchildren.
What she did in those last years was not a museum tour with a logo. It was the same job she had taken when Faye’s pregnancy opened a door: show up, hit the mark, leave the room brighter than she found it. Nightclubs and Dolly are civic objects only if you bother to count live work as work. She counted it. A woman who had been mail for a generation of GIs became, at the end, a performer who still knew the difference between a still and a night. The poster is the first hit in any search. The road years are the correction. St. Louis is the first studio. Santa Monica is the last hospital. Inglewood is the last address. Victoria and Jessica kept the private file. Remick kept the last years. The Treasury numbers from 1946 and 1947 remain the industrial fact the swimsuit still tries to eat. Fox’s weekend television still runs Mother Wore Tights and Down Argentine Way for people who came for the still and stay for the timing. That is a kind of second life the poster cannot cancel.
After she was gone
The pin-up is still the first hit in any search. That is fair and incomplete. Fox’s musicals still play on weekend television, and a certain kind of viewer is surprised to learn the woman in the poster could time a joke and land a tap combination. Monroe’s myth ate the blonde category. Grable’s films are what the category actually looked like when it paid the studio’s bills.
She came out of St. Louis on a mother’s timetable, waited ten years to be necessary, sold more tickets than almost any woman of the 1940s, let a still of her back win a war’s unofficial contest, and then worked live until the lungs quit. If you only remember the look over the shoulder, you have the poster. If you remember the Faye replacement, the Lloyd’s policy, the two daughters, and Hello, Dolly! on the road, you have her.
Portrait: Studio publicity · Public domain (PD-US, published 1931-1977 without notice) · via Wikimedia Commons