Kathryn Crawford

Kathryn Crawford (nee Moran; October 5, 1908 – December 7, 1980) was an American film and theatre actress of the 1920s and 1930s. She was also known as Katherine Crawford and Kitty Moran.

Early years Born in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, Crawford was the daughter of Michael and Ann Scott (Rusling) Moran. Her father worked in a glass factory. Her parents divorced when Crawford was 5 years old, and she did not see her mother again for nearly four decades. Her mother, who later remarried and was working as a hotel maid, searched 12 years for her daughters and found them after she saw Kathryn in a movie magazine in 1929.

Crawford first ventured into singing when she joined the choir at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church of Huntington Park while she was a high school student. The choir director gave her vocal lessons to improve her singing.

Career Crawford worked as a shop assistant for some time but was determined to make use of her singing voice and decided to pursue musical comedy. Ted Gioia wrote in the book The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire, "audience outrage subsided after the Broadway production shifted the setting of the song to Harlem, in front of the Cotton Club, and assigned the number to African-American vocalist Elisabeth Welch instead of Kathryn Crawford, a white singer." and retired from the screen. They divorced (with much publicity) on June 16, 1936.