Nan Wynn born 8 May 1918

Nan Wynn (May 8, 1918* – March 21, 1971) was an American big-band singer, and Broadway and film actress. She sang and recorded throughout the 1930s and 1940s with the Emery Deutsch, Rudy Vallee, Eddie Duchin, Richard Himber, Hal Kemp, Hudson-DeLange, Raymond Scott, Teddy Wilson and Freddie Rich orchestras.

Of Russian descent, Wynn was born Masha Vatz in York, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia, where she attended high school, and sang in the school choir. Her father, Abe Vatz, owned a department store in Wheeling, and travelled often to New York. During February 1935 while spending a weekend in New York City with her mother, Wynn's singing came to the attention of a retired producer who was a guest at the same place. He booked Wynn at a Peekskill vaudeville house, the owner of which engaged her to sing at his two other New York State properties, in Kingston and Newburgh. After working the vaudeville circuit, the late 1930s saw Wynn landing at radio station WNEW in New York for a 13-show-per-week stint and honing her talent under the mentorship of Jimmy Rich, the singing coach to Dinah Shore, Bea Wain, and Barry Wood, among others. In 1936, she appeared in a musical short with Vincent Lopez for Warner Bros.

                                     

In early 1937, Wynn became vocalist for the Hudson-DeLange Orchestra, with whom she made her first recordings. She soon began to attract attention, and by January 1938 she had left Hudson-DeLange for CBS radio, where she appeared regularly with her own fifteen-minute sustainer and on other programs, including Musical Gazette. 

In March and June 1938, Wynn recorded with Emery Deutsch on Brunswick, and in July she began a series of recordings with Teddy Wilson on the same label. She also signed with Vocalion in mid-1938, releasing solo recordings over the next year billed as “Nan Wynn and her Orchestra,” though it was only a studio band. Wynn’s vocal style fooled many into thinking she was black, and the press often went out of their way to clarify that she was actually white. One reviewer compared her voice to a cross between Mildred Bailey and Ella Fitzgerald.

Wynn substituted for Durelle Alexander in Eddy Duchin’s band in mid-September 1938 when Alexander had to return home for a family emergency, and on October 1 she made her night club debut as a solo artist at the Belmont Plaza Hotel. On October 9 she began a new sustainer program on CBS with Walter Gross leading the orchestra, recording two songs on Vocalion with Gross backing her. Wynn made two musical shorts for Paramount in 1938 and a third in 1939. In February 1939, she opened at the Famous Door night club.

In early May 1939, Wynn joined the new CBS program Time to Shine, sponsored by Griffin shoe polish and featuring Hal Kemp’s orchestra. When Kemp’s female vocalist, Maxine Gray, left the band two weeks later, Wynn took her spot, touring and recording with Kemp over the next five months. She was not an employee of Kemp however. She and Kemp were both under contract to CBS and Griffin. When Griffin ended Time to Shine in October, Wynn and Kemp parted company. Her time with Kemp, however, proved popular with the public. She placed ninth in Billboard magazine’s 1940 poll for favourite female band vocalist.

After leaving Kemp, Wynn continued her solo career. In February 1940, she joined the Concert in Rhythm program, which featured Raymond Scott’s studio orchestra and Jack Leonard as male vocalist. She also toured the theatre circuit. In mid-1940, Scott, better known at the time for his eccentric compositions, decided to try his hand at leading a straight dance band. Since Wynn had been singing with Scott on radio for the past few months, CBS contracted her as his vocalist. She was guaranteed three songs on each broadcast and would record with the band as well. Known as Raymond Scott and his New Orchestra, the group debuted in July, hitting the theatre and hotel circuit. They attracted much publicity, but Wynn was unhappy, and she quit both Scott and the radio show in early September after the band’s engagement at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago, saying she would never work with a dance band ever again.

After leaving Scott, she moved to Hollywood where she became best known for dubbing Rita Hayworth's singing voice in several films, including The Strawberry Blonde (1941), My Gal Sal (1942), and You Were Never Lovelier (1942), where she introduced the Kern-Mercer standard I'm Old Fashioned. Wynn appeared often as a nightclub singer, in such films as Million Dollar Baby (1941), Pardon My Sarong (1942), Right Guy, (1943), Princess O'Rourke (1943), Is Everybody Happy? (1943), Jam Session (1944) and Intrigue (1947). She had a starring role opposite William Lundigan in the 1941 film A Shot in the Dark (1941). Wynn also appeared in Billy Rose's 1944 Broadway musical, The Seven Lively Arts and Finian's Rainbow in 1948. At the beginning of 1948, she made her first recordings since 1941, released by Decca. In May 1948, she opened at the Blue Angel in New York and then spent a brief time later that year starring as Sharon Lonergan in the Broadway production Finian’s Rainbow, replacing Dorothy Claire.

In  1949 Wynn appeared in an ABC radio series sponsored by the Army for recruiting purposes. The program featured pop singers performing theater songs. And then tragedy struck.In early 1949, Wynn was diagnosed with throat cancer. The subsequent operation to remove the tumour damaged her voice, and she retired from show business.  Wynn worked hard to regain her singing voice, and in 1955 she attempted a comeback, recording for RCA Victor. Her voice was different, and Victor used that in promotional material, taking out full-page ads calling it “the incredible come-back story, it’s the new voice, the new sound of Nan Wynn.” The recordings received favourable reviews, and in January 1956 she toured with other RCA Victor stars as part of the ten-day, eleven-city “Starliner” train tour to raise money for the March of Dimes. She failed to catch the public’s ear, however, and Wynn’s comeback attempt was over by early 1956. 

In the early 1960s, she made appearances at American Cancer Society state meetings, providing entertainment in the form of a musical program that highlighted her life story and told what the ACS had done for her. She also appeared on the CBS talk show PM with Mike Wallace in April 1962 discussing her story.

Wynn was married three times. Her first husband, from 1944 to 1947, was producer, writer, and director Cy Howard (ne Seymour Horowitz). In 1949, she married Dr. Thomas Baylek, with whom she had a daughter, Jane. Wynn married industrialist John Small in Mexico in April 1956. Small passed away in 1969. Wynn died of cancer on March 21, 1971, in Santa Monica, California, aged 55.

(Edited from BandChirps & Wikipedia)(*some sources state 1915 as birth year)