Loading details…
Artist
Kathryn Grayson
12+ albums
female vocalists40s50ssopranooperatic
about
Kathryn Grayson (born February 9, 1922 - died February 17, 2010) was an American actress and singer who was born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The Hedrick family later moved to Franlin, St Louis, where she was discovered singing on the empty stage of the St Louis Municipal Opera House by a janitor, who introduced her to Frances Marshall of the Chicago Civic Opera, who gave the twelve-year-old-girl voice lessons. In Hollywood she would marry twice: first to actor John Shelton; secondly to actor/singer Johnnie Johnston. She had one daughter. Throughout the 1950s, she carried on an affair with mogul Howard Hughes, and was briefly engaged to him (although this was not included in the film The Aviator, as the film only profiled Hughes through the late 1940s). Though she started out as MGM's answer to Deanna Durbin (with films such as Seven Sweethearts and Anchors Aweigh), she proved herself a top star in Thousands Cheer, Anchors Aweigh and Two Sisters From Boston, and in the film versions of the Broadway hits Show Boat (1951) and Kiss Me, Kate (1953). Grayson also appeared in a duo of films with tenor Mario Lanza, and Howard Keel, whom she teamed successfully with in a highly lauded cabaret act in the 1960s. With the end of MGM's great era of musicals, so ended Miss Grayson's film career. Kathryn was on stage in numerous stage musicals such as Show Boat, Rosalinda, Kiss Me, Kate, Naughty Marietta, and The Merry Widow, for which she was nomina
