Up for auction "My Sister Eileen" Janet Blair Hand Signed 3X5 Card. This item is authenticated By Todd
Mueller Autographs and comes with their certificate of authenticity. ES - 6831 Janet
Blair (born Martha
Janet Lafferty; April 23, 1921 – February 19, 2007) was a big-band singer
who became a popular American film and television actress. Janet Blair was born
Martha Janet Lafferty on April 23, 1921, in Altoona, Pennsylvania, the
daughter of musically oriented parents,[1] Mr. and Mrs. Fred B. Lafferty. Her father led
the choir and sang solos in his church, and her mother played both piano and
organ. She had a brother, Fred Jr., and a sister, Louise. Blair began her
acting career on film in 1941, being placed under contract to Columbia Pictures. Before that, she was a featured singer in
the Hal Kemp Orchestra. During World War II, she appeared as
the pin-up girl in the March 1944 issue of Yank magazine. She
made a string of successful pictures, although she is today best remembered for
playing Rosalind Russell's sister
in My Sister Eileen (1942) and Rita Hayworth's best friend in Tonight and Every Night (1945).
In the 1947 film The Fabulous Dorseys,
Blair returned to her musical roots, portraying a singer. In the late 1940s,
Blair had star billing in the crime drama I Love Trouble and
the comedy The Fuller Brush Man (both
1948), but was dropped by Columbia and did not return to pictures for several
years. She made a rare dramatic appearance in the British horror film Night of the Eagle (1962).
She played the wife of Tony Randall in the
comedy Boys' Night Out, a
motion picture released in the same year, which starred James Garner and Kim Novak. In 1950, Blair took the lead role of Nellie
Forbush in the U.S touring production of the stage musical South Pacific, making
more than 1,200 performances in three years. " never missed a
performance", she noted proudly. During the tour, she also married her
second husband, producer-director Nick Mayo, and they became parents of Amanda
and Andrew. Blair also starred in the Broadway comedy A Girl Can Tell in 1953.
Blair was a star musical performer in premier nightclubs and supper clubs such
as the Empire Room at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. In 1955, Blair starred
as Venus in a live production of One Touch of Venus on NBC-TV. Blair
appeared on television in various variety-show guest appearances—saying,
"I think I appeared on the Milton Berle Show more than any other
guest"—and hosted, with John Raitt and Edie Adams, the 1958 summer replacement for the Dinah Shore Chevy Show for
the vacationing star Dinah Shore. She was a
cast member during the 1956–1957 TV season on Caesar's Hour, a comedy-variety series starring Sid Caesar. She appeared as a guest panelist on the
June 9, 1957, episode of What's My Line?. On television in 1971, Blair co-starred
with Henry Fonda in The Smith Family,
a comedy-drama series on ABC featuring Ron Howard as their son. Her last performance on television
was in a 1991 episode of Murder, She Wrote, starring Angela Lansbury. On radio, Blair co-starred with George Raft in "Broadway," a 1942 episode
of Lux Radio Theatre on CBS.
Blair recorded an album of standards entitled Flame Out! for
the Dico label, which included ballads such as "Don't
Explain" and "Then You've Never Been Blue". |