Too Marvelous for Words: The Life and Career of Ruby Keeler

The Life and Career of Ruby Keeler

RALPH HECTOR KEELER WAS THE SON of Irish immigrant parents who settled in Canada. A butcher by trade, he married a practical, well bred Irish Catholic girl named Elnora Nellie Leahy at the beginning of the 20th Century. Their first child, William, was born in 1907. The hard working Keelers toiled many long and tiring hours in a grocery story in Halifax and lived in a modest home in Dartmouth at 13 Oak Street (since demolished), where Ethel Hilda Ruby was born on August 25, 1910. Two years later, a second girl, Gertrude, would join the family.

Like so many immigrant families all over the world, Ralph and Nellie Keeler saw America as a country of unlimited opportunities and chances for advancement. Ruby was three when the family set sail for America, landing in New York. They moved to Yorkville section on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and Ralph Keeler got a job as a truck driver for the Knickerbocker Ice Company.

The Keelers soon learned that reality did not match their idealized vision of America as a land of Milk and Honey-at least not in Yorkville. Their life in Halifax seemed almost idyllic compared to their rough and tumble existence in squalid tenement building in an overcrowded, somewhat run down neighborhood in New York. To Bill, Ruby and Gertrude, however, the new surroundings were invigorating and filled with excitement for the three energetic youngsters. Ruby latter recalled There was a place we lived which I loved because it had a fire escape and we could sleep there when it got hot. The Keelers lived nearby the family of one of Ruby’s future co-stars, James Cagney (I didn’t know Jim or his brother Bill at the time, though, said Ruby).

RUBY, AGE 12….

The Keeler family continued to grow with the births of three more girls – Helen, Anna May and Margie. Music and dancing played a large part in the family’s activities. All the children, as well as their parents, loved to sing and dance around the apartment. Ruby would later recall, When I think about it, my father, Lord love his soul, was the one who sparked my love for dancing. When I was a little girl, we lived in a neighborhood where there were social functions, parties with sawdust on the floor. Everyone attended – even the kids. A band would play, and Papa would always waltz with me. He was a big man. We would waltz and waltz and I was so proud. He would turn me around, say to the right, and then we would waltz a little more. He would lean over and whisper to me, ‘reverse’ which meant that he was going to spin me around the other way and one day when Papa and I danced, he didn’t have to say reverse – I just followed him. I was so happy, you’d think I won the championship of the world! It was one of the big moments of my life. That was when I first realized what it was to dance.

Ruby began classes at St. Catherine of Sienna Grammar School on East 69th Street. When I’m in New York, I still go to Mass there, said Ruby in 1971. It’s changed now, of course. The east side has become so fancy these days you can’t stand it. She began to dance from the start. The high point of young Ruby’s school day was when her class performed drill exercises (We did little dances, really). She got involved in the school’s amateur productions; in one, she appeared as The Easter Bunny.

Ruby’s first public appearance came on October 28, 1920, when, at the age of ten, she appeared in the annual Sienna Athletic Club Minstrel Show and Reception, presented at New York City’s Central Opera House. The performers were members of the athletic club, parishioners, and children who attended the church’s grammar school. The show’s purpose was to raise funds. Ruby appeared as a member of the The Eastside Sextet.

As a child, Ruby loved to perform in local school and church productions. She is second from left:

Front row, second from right:

Back row, third from right:

St. Catherine’s dancing teacher, Helen Guest, recognized the girl’s ability and grace. She suggested to Mr. and Mrs. Keeler that they consider enrolling their daughter for private lessons, but the family could not afford these. However, Miss Guest had decided that Ruby should study dance, and she would help in any way possible. She arranged for some classes for her. The school I attended was the Metropolitan Opera House, on 41st Street between Broadway and 7th Avenue, Ruby said. I took ballet instruction, and I think that kind of training was invaluable when I did ballroom and tap. To get to the school, Ruby walked thirty-odd blocks in each direction to save the Third Avenue El fare. At the same time, she garnered much experience and polish dancing assorted popular dances of the day at church benefits and at the civic and community center affairs.

Soon Ruby’s parents sent her and her brother Bill to a dancing school run by Jack Blue. The school boasted of the many stars it had helped reach the pinnacle of success (Fred and Adele Astaire, Marilyn Miller, The Marx Brothers, Eddie Cantor, Gilda Gray and Al Jolson). Here, she studied basic ballet, tap, and folk dancing. Blue was impressed with Ruby from her very first lesson and saw that she definitely had potential. Around this time, Ralph Keeler became ill. He was forced to cut his work schedule to part time and soon required a serious throat operation. Money was dwindling, and medical bills were piling up. In order to continue studying, the thirteen-year old Ruby began teaching young children in exchange for her own lessons. After three months, she decided she must try to earn some money with her abilities to help out her family.

Jack Blue knew everyone who was anyone in show business. Most significantly, he was the dancing mater of George M. Cohan, the flamboyant and cocky Man who owns Broadway (as his own song proclaimed). Blue persuaded Ruby to go to a chorus line audition for a show that was being written, produced, and directed by Cohan. The show was called THE RISE OF ROSIE O’REILLY, and would produce a popular song in There’s a Ring to the Name of Rosie. Young Ruby decided that she would give it a try – and the result was her first professional contract. Meanwhile, she attended school in accordance with the New York State Education Law.

Reminiscing about the audition Ruby recalled Julian Mitchell was the dance director for the show, and when I came backstage with my friend, he was auditioning a lot of girls. I looked around and noticed that the apron of the stage was wooden, but that the rest of the stage was covered up. I thought, ‘When it gets to me, I’m going to dance up on the apron so he can hear my taps.’ That’s a typical tap dancer, eh? When he came to me, I said, ‘May I dance up there?’ I didn’t get an answer, so I did anyway. While I was dancing I heard him ask, ‘Who said you could dance up here?’ I said, ‘Well I asked you.’ And to make a long story short, I got the job. After working awhile I found out that I could have danced at home, because Julian Mitchell was deaf! He couldn’t hear. I could have auditioned out in the alley!

Mrs. Keeler, along with Ruby’s brother and sisters, accompanied Ruby to Boston for the tryouts of THE RISE OF ROSIE O’REILLY. The tiny dancer was paid the incredible amount of $45 weekly – more than the minimum chorus wage by $10. In fact, it was more than her father was earning at the time. The show moved on to New York and opened on December 25, 1923. The reviews for the show were not promising, however, and it closed in ten weeks. I had never been in a real theater, Ruby said. My parents didn’t know anything about show business, but it meant $45 a week and we were poor – not struggling, however. I don’t go for that bit about a struggling childhood. Kids aren’t unhappy about finances because they don’t know any better. Before the show’s final curtain, Ruby left the theater for the Claridge Hotel and rehearsals for a night club review. Unfortunately, the review came to nothing as the producers ran out of funds.

Ruby began entering the amateur night and talent shows which were held weekly at night clubs in the city. One of the most famous and spectacular amateur shows took place at The Moulin Rouge Club. It was headed by the renowned Broadway impresario Nile T. Granlund. Granlund, or N.T.G. as he was known, hired skilled professionals to hold on to his prize money. Among these were Clare Luce (who would be Fred Astaire’s leading lady in the 1932 hit THE GAY DIVORCE before switching to straight dramas like OF MICE AND MEN) and future Follies star Fances Upton, who, ironically, would be co-starting with Ruby in WHOOPEE! in 1928. It was really a talent search, explained Ruby. Mr. Granlund had a chance to screen a lot of people who could dance to the kind of popular rhythms he used in his shows.

Granlund found such a performer in Ruby. According to one magazine, Among a number of unknown girls, one had entered who was not yet thirteen. She was skinny and poorly dressed and looked underfed. She handed in her music, a lead sheet of fast tap. She had no orchestrations and had to work with the pianist alone. She had no costume and came on in her shabby street attire with clumsy, cheap, muddy shoes. She ‘went into her dance’. And she stopped the show. The crowd wouldn’t let her off. She knew only a few steps, but these she had to repeat again and again…When all the contestants were lined up, the house voted for the little ragamuffin, and N.T.G. had to give the prize to the intruder who said her name was Ruby Keeler.

Granlund knew real talent when he saw it. He helped Ruby to get a job at the Strand Roof, a second rate club, where she was paid $50 a week to perform her tap dance routine. Granlund thought of having the young dancer do her numbers in several clubs each night, so he introduced her to Larry Fay, an underworld figure who owned a taxi cab company and a piece of quite a few night spots. Fay and her partner Owney The Killer Madden (a supposed mastermind of several killings and a backer of a number of clubs during the Prohibition) brought Ruby to the attention of the legendary night club hostess Texas Guinan.

Texas Guinan is one of the 20th Century’s most colorful and ambitious characters. Born Mary Louise Cecilia Guinan to Irish-Canadian immigrants in 1884 in Waco, Texas, she was bitten by show business bug early in her life. While attending convent school as a girl, she sang and played organ in

the church choir and decided she wanted to be a performer. She married a cartoonist named John Moynahan in 1904 and moved with him to Chicago. The union would be short lived, however, and Guinan took herself to New York in 1906, becoming a singer in both vaudeville and Broadway musicals. Her next venture was into the still recent phenomenon of motion pictures. She became the movies’ first cowgirl star, beginning with 1917’s THE STAINLESS BARRIER. Billed as Queen of the West, she made over fifty films, mainly shorts. She returned to New York after a stint entertaining the troops during World War I, where she reasoned that prohibition could lead to an even more lucrative career. She opened the 300 Club and became New York’s first female emcee. The club took off like a rocket and became a celebrity hangout, attracting such stars as George Gershwin, John Barrymore, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, Irving Berlin, Clara Bow and John Gilbert. Guinan went on to establish several more night spots in the city. She once quipped, I would rather have a square inch of New York than all the rest of the world, and her introduction of the performers in her club – Give the little girl a big hand – became a national catchphrase. She went on to make two more films – Queen of the Nightclubs in 1929, which introduced George Raft, and Broadway Through a Keyhole in 1933 (more on that one later). While on the road with her stage review Too Hot for Paris, she died in Canada of Amoebic Dysentery on November 5, 1933.

Writer Herbert C. Goldman said, The Speakeasies played host to Broadway entertainers, politicians, sports figures and gangsters, all melded together in one big entertainment and whiskey pot. Guinan’s El Fey Club was among the most popular, largely because of its hostess’ rollicking, outgoing personality and her trademark greeting of her customers – Hello suckers!. Ruby was scheduled to perform twice every night at the El Fey Club in between shows at the Strand. It was during Prohibition so it must have been a speakeasy, said Ruby in 1971, but we called it a night club. It was small, but I guess anybody who was anybody went to the Guinan Club. All the stars, I remember Miss Guinan as a very large and very wonderful woman, warm and kind to us and always singing. She was also whisked into Granlund’s Moulin Rouge shows as a professional. Soon she was earning $150 a week. I worked for three years from 11 p.m. until 4 a.m., Ruby recalled. I also studied dancing and had to spend time rehearsing. My mother was constantly with me at the time and would be at the club until I finished my work for the night. She also remarked that Texas was a very good to her girls, very protective. We weren’t allowed to go downstairs and mingle.

Years later, Ruby would fondly recall her night club days. Texas Guinan would always introduce me. I had a chorus of about six to eight girls behind me, and we would come out and do little audience participation numbers. For example, I might be dressed as a mailman, and they’d be dressed in little skirts. They’d all tap dance out to the tables and hand out letters while I sang the song, ‘I’ve Got a Letter for You’…Then I’d do a tap solo. That kind of thing…and it was great fun!

The Speakeasies undoubtedly had somewhat sinister and potentially dangerous atmosphere, yet an aura of respectability and innocence surrounded Ruby. Her own impeccable character along with with her parent’s close supervision of her activities combined to create a sort of protective wall around her, allowing her to work in such disreputable conditions and emerging unscathed. And if all else failed, Ruby had picked up enough savvy to dispel any unwanted advances with a show of what her children would later refer to as her Irish temper and a sharp retort. The Gerry Society also saw to it that Ruby furthered her education. For a time, she studied with a private tutor. She also attended The Professional Children’s School (along with friends Patsy Kelly, Lillian Roth, Gene Raymond, Marguerite Churchill and William Janney). Every night, it was back to the clubs. About the patrons of the night spots and the steady flow of gangsters, Ruby said, I never had any trouble; in fact, I must say that everyone treated me very well. Among her friends at the time were fellow night club performers George Raft and Ruby Stevens (who would go on to make quite a splash in films herself as Barbara Stanwyck), and Dorothy (Hannah) Williams, who would marry Jack Dempsey. This rigorous life style taught the young girl the importance of rest and good physical habits. Moreover, she had the chance to develop and broaden her talents.

Ruby began to earn a reputation among the New York night club crowd as an outstanding dancer with personality plus. Her name began to appear in newspaper columns such as Walter Winchell’s and she was attracting a steadily developing fan base. Among her admirers at the time were superstars Fred and Adele Astaire, who frequented the El Fey Club during their smash Broadway run in FUNNY FACE. Astaire wrote in his autobiography, The Texas Guinan Club was a long, narrow, dimly-lit room, one flight up, with a small dance floor at the far end where the entertainers worked…it was an interesting and enormously successful spot. Give this little girl a nice big hand, Texas said as Ruby Keeler came out for her dance. That we did, and after the dance, too. Ruby was terrific with her military tap…and soon afterward became a top star in Hollywood.

Ruby entertained at the dozen night clubs in the city; among these, The Silver Slipper (where the comedy trio of Lou Clayton, Eddie Jackson and Jimmy Durante – who would co-star with Ruby in SHOW GIRL in 1929 – also performed), the Deauville, The Mimic and The Frivolity. Soon, Texas Guinan would open her own club – Tex’s 300 Club – and Ruby was scheduled to appear there as well. Miss Guinan, the other chorus girls, and such underworld figures as Johnny Irish Costello, who was part owner of the Silver Slipper, continued to watch over Ruby with almost parental concern. After the club was closed down by the law, Costello opened a new nitery in the Winter Garden Theater Building called The Rendezvous. Owney Madden and Costello saw to it that Ruby was hired to dance there as well, which helped to boost her burgeoning career even further.

There has been considerable speculation over the years as to the exact nature of the relationship between Ruby and the married Johnny Costello. As with several events in her life, there seem to be numerous different versions. Since Ruby and Costello are no longer with us, along with the fact that she was always a very private person, the real story will remain a mystery. Some insist they were romantically involved while others believe he served as a protector and big brother to the younger, naïve dancer.

Given the evidence we do have, it would appear that the latter would be closer to the truth. By all reports, Costello was always a gentleman with Ruby and treated her in a most protective manner. He may have had thoughts of wooing and eventually marrying her, but evidence suggests he never acted on his impulses. Moreover, Ruby was a minor and still lived with her parents. Her mother was a constant presence during her nightclub days escorting her daily to and from the club. Ruby explained, "The dancers were not allowed to sit with the guys between shows or drink the bootleg booze. If anyone touched us, Texas Guinan would usher him out the door. Texas Guinan functioned as a surrogate mother with her girls and was known for being protective and forbidding them to fraternize with clients and personnel. Significant also is the matter of Ruby’s staunch Catholic faith, which would not permit any romantic involvement with a married man.

According to one account, one evening in 1926, an important figure played the El Fey Club a visit. He was the man who was called The World’s Greatest Entertainer – Al Jolson. When he arrived, he was vigorously greeted by friends, admirers and Texas Guinan. Miss Guinan motioned to Ruby, who was dancing onstage, and called out Hey, Jolson! Give this little girl a big hand! Jolson – as well as everyone else present – heartily complied. Another version claims that Jolson’s first glimpse of Ruby was in the show Sidewalks of New York a year later.

Ruby’s popularity soared, and more job offers began pouring in. She accepted one to appear in a Broadway show called BYE BYE BONNIE which opened at the Ritz Theater in January of 1927. She received the same favorable notices that she would for most of her career. The New York times reported, Miss Keeler, a name well-known to the devotees of night clubs, did a tap-dance the other evening about ten o’clock and completely stopped BYE BYE BONNIE. This young girl, so young that the law required her mother to sign her contracts, seems to possess that pearl of great price, personality. Variety noted, In a conventional musical, Miss Keeler’s dancing was a sensation which carried with it a touch of the sentimental as she fixed most of her attention on Texas Guinan in an upper stage box.

After BYE BYE BONNIE closed, Ruby was signed up for LUCKY, which also featured bandleader Paul Whiteman and comedian Skeets Gallagher (who, two seasons earlier, had starred in a show called NO, NO, NANETTE, which Ruby would make her historic comeback in some 40 years later). LUCKY only lasted 71 performances – but again Ruby was singled out as the show’s outstanding feature. Next, she appeared in SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK with comedienne Ray Dooley and a newcomer named Bob Hope. As Mamie, Ruby garnered the best notices. Richard Watts, Jr. of the Herald Tribune remarked, There is excellent dancing by Ruby Keeler. Years later, Ruby recalled, On Sunday nights, all of the Broadway performers went to the Winter Garden Theater where there was a sort of open house and everybody did a little spot.

Meanwhile, Al Jolson had created motion picture history. Warner Brothers Studio in Burbank, California, had bought the screen rights to a play called THE JAZZ SINGER by Samson Raphaelson. It had starred George Jessel on Broadway and had a storyline that had vague connections to Jolson’s own career. The Warners planned to produce THE JAZZ SINGER as a sound film – a talking picture utilizing their new Vitaphone process. On learning this, Jessel upped the ante and demanded more money. Then the studio contacted Jolson, who jumped at the idea of trying something new. Jolson, a much bigger star than Jessel, would be a far greater box office lure, and Jessel’s greediness cost him a chance at screen immortality and a place in cinema history.

THE JAZZ SINGER, starring Jolson, May McAvoy, Warner Oland and Eugenie Besserer opened in October 6, 1927. No single motion picture has ever had such an effect on the entire industry. The film was enthusiastically received – not for its trite, soggy story (which even at the time was dismissed as being terribly banal) but for the brilliant Vitaphone sequences and for Jolson’s vivid performance. Now the public clamored for more sound films, and the studios answered back. Jolson was placed under contract to Warner Brothers and soon began work on his second film, THE SINGING FOOL.

Ruby’s outstanding work in SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK was noticed by the greatest Broadway producer of the day, Florenz Ziegfeld. He offered her a major role in his upcoming musical comedy WHOOPEE! Rehearsals were not to begin for several months, so Billy Grady of The William Morris Agency suggested to Ruby that she and another young dancer, Mary Lucas, go to the West Coast to appear in a series of prologue shows which The Loew Organization put on before the movie feature in their chain of theaters.

On his return trip to California from New York to begin filming The Singing Fool, Jolson ran into comedienne and singer Fanny Brice, who was on the same train. She was heading to Hollywood to make her film debut in Warner Bros. MY MAN. As Miss Brice got off her train, Jolson noticed two young girls with her whom he remembered having seen at Texas Guinan’s 300 Club. Fanny and Jolson embraced warmly and she introduced her two young companions to him. This is Mary Lucas, said Fanny, as Jolson smiled at the girl. And this is … Ruby Keeler, grinned Jolson, grasping her hand. He had not forgotten Ruby Keeler! When asked, more than 60 years later, if she was nervous at the first encounter, Ruby replied, Oh yes! Well, it was really quite a thing to meet Al Jolson, you know. I was star-struck, just like everybody else! At first, Ruby was understandably intimidated and frightened by the superstar and did all she could to avoid him. Naturally, her reticence made Jolson that much more determined to win her over.

A few nights later, Jolson escorted Ruby to the premier of LILAC TIME, the new Colleen Moore-Gary Cooper picture. Plenty of photographers and newsmen were on hand, and tossed speculations galore into their columns. Jolson’s first marriage, to dancer Henrietta Keller was long forgotten. His second, to FOLLIES beauty Ethel Delmar had ended in divorce over a year ago. In typical fashion, the newspapers were buzzing about whether or not the lovely teenaged dancer from New York’s hottest night spots be the next Mrs. Jolson?

Jolson contacted his agent, William Morris. He told him to get Ruby a job dancing for $350 a week, claiming that, as best hoofer around, she was worth it. Morris, whose New York office was already handling Ruby, gladly complied, and got her a job at one of Hollywood’s finest clubs. Nightly, she received flowers from Jolson.

Jolson and Ruby began spending more and more time together. And, unusual for the entertained, he began to confide in her about his obsessive fear of growing older and of death. Of his terror that he would one day lose his voice and be shunned by audiences. He spoke freely to her about his previous unsuccessful marriages and his concern over the possibility that the women who pretended to care for him were just money-hungry opportunists. Mr. Show Business, as he was called, may have put up a good front for the public, but inside he was a frightened, lonely man. As Ruby once said, He had many acquaintances but few friends.

Upon her return to New York, Ruby was swamped by newspaper reporters with cameras. Gossip columnists were screaming about the sensational new romance – with several calling it a glorified publicity stunt and little more. After all, Jolson had previously given unknown starlets a boost to higher professional plateaus. Now, as she would later, Ruby avoided the reporters and continued her work at the clubs. She began dancing at The Pavilion Royale, a Long Island spot. Nile T. Granlund was the club’s host and headed a Sunday evening radio broadcast from the club as every Sunday was Celebrity Night. Granlund received notice that Al Jolson would appear on the show one night.

Johnny Costello made it known that he wished to see Jolson. He asked Ruby to tell Jolson to meet him at a hotel one night. Ruby relayed the message to Jolson, who complied. Costello said that he knew that Ruby loved Jolson and asked the singer if he returned her love. Jolson said he did. Then marry her as soon as you can, said Costello.

The September 12, 1928 issue of Variety reported: There is an inside report that Al Jolson will assay a third marriage during his current visit to New York. Before leaving the city, Jolson will witness the premier of THE SINGING FOOL at the Winter Garden September 19. After that, he may go to London for the premier of THE JAZZ SINGER. Inside Broadway gossip has it that an ex-Tenth Avenue girl who herself had made a name along Mazda Lane, Ruby Keeler, will be the next Mrs. Al Jolson, marrying the millionaire comedian whose personal fortune is placed beyond the $3 million mark. Miss Keeler, still in her teens, is regarded as one of the greatest tap-dancers.

Jolson escorted Ruby to the premier of THE SINGING FOOL at the Winter Garden. It looked as thought the newspaper columnist’s predictions were coming true.

Johnny Costello had heard stories about Al behaving in a physically abusive manner in his previous marriages. Costello wanted Jolson to promise never to lay a hand on Ruby (a promise that, it has been rumored, he failed to keep) and to provide a generous financial settlement for her should the marriage fail. Rumor mongers were claiming that Jolson had given Ruby a wedding present of one million dollars, payable before the wedding. Cynics were to remark that his gesture was what swayed Ruby’s parents into giving their consent to the union. Years later, Ruby would dismiss these speculations as a lot of lies…I was blessed with a wonderful mother and father and they just understood everything…it was a kind of a shock to them and they just wished happiness and felt, I’m sure, that they had taught me right from wrong. I lived with my family until I was married. That’s what we used to do in the old days – and it’s the best way, if you ask me.

Word of Al’s financial arrangement became big news among members of New York’s underworld, reasoning that the singer could easily be shaken down, Jack Legs Diamond contacted Jolson and demanded $50,000 from him, accompanied by vague threats of impending violence against him or Ruby – should he fail to cooperate. Jolson appealed to columnist Mark Hellinger, who was well acquainted with the city’s gangster element, and pleaded with him to intercede on his behalf. Hellinger called Owney Madden, who in turn got in touch with Diamond. The following morning, Al got a call from Diamond, who informed him he’d been joking and to ignore his request.

On September 21, 1928, Jolson squired Ruby out of the city and to Port Chester, New York, where they were quietly married by Justice of the Peace George Slater. Jolson’s exact birth date is unknown but he was anywhere from 42 to 48 years old. Ruby was not quite one month past her 18th birthday. Jolson’s father, Cantor Moses Yoelson and his stepmother Hessi were not pleased with the arrangement, but being well acquainted with Al’s strong willed, forceful nature, had little choice but to accept the marriage. Ruby’s mother had already told her