Jessie Matthews

Most of Jessie Matthews' recordings seem quaintly antique, artifacts of a by-gone age-and, to some extent, they are just that, her fluttering, plummy toned voice with its romantic yearing turning back clocks as it fills a room at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. But for most of the 1930's, Jessie Matthews was the most popular musical star in England, and the only British film music personality who was ranked on a par with such American performers as Fred Astaire, Ruby Keeler, or Ginger Rogers. She was a favorite of Irving Berlin and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, all of whom gave her some of their very best work. And her magnum screen opus, Evergreen, remains the only British musical of the 1930's to be ranked by fans of the genre on a par with American musicals of the period. Jessie Matthews was born in London in 1907. One of 13 children of an impoverished Soho fruit vendor, she endured a childhood of dire poverty. She showed extraordinary dancing ability from an early age, beginning to dance immediately after learning to walk. Her formal education ended when she was 12 years old and began working in vaudeville. Three years later, she'd worked her way up to legitimate theater, when Irving Berlin spotted her in the London production of his 1923 Music Box Revue. The composer was so charmed by Matthews, that he gave her "I Want To Go Back To Michigan" as a featured number in the revue. Matthews' most important performer-composer relationship, however, was with Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, beginning with the 1928 production of One Damn Thing After Another, for which they wrote the song "My Heart Stood Still." In 1930, that show's producer, Charles B. Cochran, was looking for a new vehicle in which he could star Matthews and her...