HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RUBY KEELER!

She may not have been the world's greatest singer but, boy. could Ruby Keeler hoof it.  Keller (1909-1993) lied about her age, saying she was 16 rather than 13, and got a tap audition for George M. Cohen's The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly for which she was paid $45 a week (equal to at least $830 today).  She worked her way through stage and Broadway shows when, in 1928, Flo Ziegfield's Whoopee!, but the part was recast before the show opened.  That same year she married singer and entertainer Al Jolson; she was nineteen years old.  in 1923 Darryl Zanuck paired her with Dick Powell for a series of musicals, starting with 42nd Street.  She retired from show business shortly after divorcing Jolson in 1940, and married businessman John Horner Lowe in 1941, with whom she had four children (she and Jolson also had one adopted son).  Horner died in 1961 and Ruby Keeler returned to the footlights two years later in a successful Broadway revival of No, No, Nanette; Keeler stayed with the Broadway show for two years, following it with another two years of touring.  She suffered a brain aneurysm in 1974 and became a spokesperson for the National Stroke Association.  She died of kidney cancer in 1993, age 83.

Ruby Keeler had a certain winsomeness and enthusiasm that carried well for the camera.  Watching her perform still gives me joy, although the more I watch her dance the more my feet ache in sympathy.

    

From Ready, Willing, and Able (1937), Ruby Keeler and Lee Dixon tap dance on a giant typewriter to "Too Marvelous for Words"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV2ZwftnaHg&list=PLRjputxXCIWVSpDxZ3yGtVwmBf4zjtnne&index=11

"I Want to Be Happy"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aDJGvFSVOQ&list=PLRjputxXCIWVSpDxZ3yGtVwmBf4zjtnne&index=1

From 42nd Street (1933):  "Come and Meet Those Dancing Feet"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBmGCn81Qc8&list=PLRjputxXCIWVSpDxZ3yGtVwmBf4zjtnne&index=3

With Paul Draper and Chorus in Colleen (1936)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfT1w6YtmWA&list=PLRjputxXCIWVSpDxZ3yGtVwmBf4zjtnne&index=10

 Ruby and Clarence Nordstrom "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" in another clip from 42nd Street

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BhKrEPQ9dg

Tap dancing for Dick Powell in Dames (1943)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMaqJtaCxlM

 Also with Dick Powell:  "Pettin' in the Park," from  Gold Diggers of 1933

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7sGPbapvxU

With James Cagney in the "Shanghai Lil" scene from Footlight Parade (1933)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUyREZ_Hcr4