MARTHA RAYE : Send in the Clown

Films of the Golden Age
Issue Number 118
Summer 2024

“I didn’t work until I was three but after that I never stopped. I never realized I was being culturally deprived, that I was having a louusy upbringing. We wer too busy making a living.”

Paramount’s female version of Bob Hope, madcap MARTHA RAYE (1916-1994) was born in a trunk to vaudevillian parents and quickly stole their act once she hit the stage with them. Dubbed “The Big Mouth,” she became a star with her very first picture, RHYTHM ON THE RANGE (1936) and went on to share her hijinks with such stars as Hope, Bing Crosby and frequent cowboy sidekick Bob Burns before handed her own raucous vehicles to sing and star in. Too big for the screen, TV tapped into her talents better and she was given her own musical variety show in the 1950s. In mid-career, she was given awards and medals of valor for entertaining the troops on the USO circuit.

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