Nanette Fabray

Nanette Fabray (born Ruby Bernadette Nanette Theresa Fabares;

She used one of her middle names, Nanette, as her first name in honor of a beloved aunt from San Diego named Nanette. Throughout life, she often used the nickname Nan. Her family resided in Los Angeles, and Fabray's mother was instrumental in introducing her to show business as a child. At a young age, she studied tap dance with, among others, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. She made her professional stage debut as Miss New Year's Eve 1923 at the Million Dollar Theater at the age of three. She spent much of her childhood appearing in vaudeville productions as a dancer and singer under the name Baby Nan. She appeared with stars such as Ben Turpin.

Despite her mother's influence, Fabray was not interested in show business as a young girl. Consequently, as an adult she did not believe in pushing children into performing at a young age. Despite a persistent rumor, she was never a regular or recurring guest in the Our Gang series, but she did appear as an extra during a party scene.

Artur Rodziński, conductor of the New York Philharmonic, saw Fabray's performance in Meet the People and offered to sponsor operatic vocal training for her at the Juilliard School. She studied opera at Juilliard with Lucia Dunham in 1941 while performing in her first Broadway musical, Cole Porter's Let's Face It!, with Danny Kaye and Eve Arden. However, as she preferred performing in musical theatre over opera, she withdrew from the school after about five months. In December 1956, she appeared in an episode of Playhouse 90 titled "The Family Nobody Wanted" alongside Lew Ayres and Tim Hovey.

In 1961, Fabray starred in 26 episodes of Westinghouse Playhouse, a half-hour sitcom series that also was known as The Nanette Fabray Show or Yes, Yes Nanette. The character was loosely based on herself and her life as a newlywed with new stepchildren.

Fabray appeared as the mother of the main character in several television series such as One Day at a Time, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Coach, in which she played mother to real-life niece Shelley Fabares. (Fabares also appeared as an unrelated character in One Day at a Time.)

Fabray made 13 guest appearances on The Carol Burnett Show. She performed on multiple episodes of The Dean Martin Show, The Hollywood Palace, Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall and The Andy Williams Show. She was a panelist on 230 episodes of the long-running game show The Hollywood Squares, a mystery guest on What's My Line?, and later a panelist on Match Game in 1973. Other recurring game-show appearances included participation in Password; I've Got a Secret; He Said, She Said; Celebrity Bowling; Stump the Stars; Let's Make a Deal; All Star Secrets; and Family Feud.

She appeared in guest-starring roles on Burke's Law; Love, American Style; Maude; The Love Boat; and Murder, She Wrote. During the PBS program Pioneers of Television: Sitcoms, Mary Tyler Moore credited Fabray with inspiring her trademark comedic crying technique. In 1986, Fabray was cast in the pilot episode of the unsold TBS sitcom project Here to Stay.

In 1953, Fabray played her best-known screen role as a Betty Comden-like playwright in the MGM musical comedy The Band Wagon, performing in, among others, the musical numbers "That's Entertainment" and "Louisiana Hayride"; and in "Triplets" which was also included in That's Entertainment, Part II. Fabray's additional film credits include The Happy Ending (1969), Harper Valley PTA (1978) and Amy (1981).

Fabray's final work occurred in 2007 when she appeared in The Damsel Dialogues, a musical revue at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks, California.

Personal life Fabray's first husband, David Tebet, was in television marketing and talent and later became a vice president at NBC. According to Fabray, their marriage ended in divorce partially because of her depression, anxiety and insecurity related to her worsening hearing loss. Her second husband was screenwriter Ranald MacDougall, whose writing credits include Mildred Pierce and Cleopatra and who served as president of the Writers Guild of America in the early 1970s, They were married from 1957 until MacDougall's death in 1973 and had one son together, Jamie MacDougall. Fabray was associated with her longtime neighbor Ronald Reagan's campaign for the governorship of California in 1966.

She was hospitalized for almost two weeks after being rendered unconscious by a falling pipe backstage during a live broadcast of Caesar's Hour in 1955. In 1978, during the filming of Harper Valley PTA, Fabray suffered a second major concussion after falling, hitting her neck on the sidewalk and the back of her head on a rock. The accident was caused when a live elephant appearing in the film stampeded when it was spooked by a drunken bystander. Fabray developed associated memory loss and visual issues such as nystagmus but had to finish her scenes, including one involving a car chase. She was closely directed, coached, and fed lines as she could not remember her lines or cues as a result of the concussion. She was filmed from specific angles to hide the abnormal eye movements that the concussion had temporarily caused.

Activism A longtime activist of hearing awareness and support of the deaf, she sat on boards and spoke at many related functions. Also a proponent of Total Communication and teaching the deaf language and communication in any way possible, including American Sign Language and not just the oralism method of the time, Fabray was one of, if not the first, to use sign language on [live] television, something which she continued to showcase on many programs on which she made appearances, including the Carol Burnett Show, Match Game '73, and I've Got a Secret. She even contributed the story line to an entire 1982 episode of One Day at a Time, which focused on hearing loss awareness and acceptance, treatment options, and sign language. Fabray appeared in a 1986 infomercial for hearing device and deafness support products for House Ear Institute. In 2001, she wrote to advice columnist Dear Abby to decry the loud background music played on television programs. A founding member of the National Captioning Institute, to bring awareness to the need for media closed-captioning.

Likewise, after the passing of her second husband, Randy MacDougall, Fabray also started to learn about the tribulations associated with spousal death and began to bring awareness to the need for changes in the law for widows and widowers. She focused her later years on campaigning for widows' rights, particularly pertaining to women's inheritance laws, taxes, and asset protection.

Death Fabray died on February 22, 2018, at the Canterbury nursing home in California at the age of 97 from natural causes. She was cremated at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City in its crematory. Her urn was buried next to her second husband, Ranald MacDougall, afterwards.

Honors A Tony and three-time Primetime Emmy award winner, Fabray has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1986, she received a Life Achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild.

She won a Golden Apple Award from the Hollywood Women's Press Club in 1960 along with Janet Leigh for being a Most Cooperative actress.

She was awarded the President's Distinguished Service Award and the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award for her long efforts on behalf of the deaf and hard-of-hearing.

Partial filmography Film

Television

Stage work The Miracle (1939) Six Characters in Search of an Author (1939) The Servant of Two Masters (1939) Meet the People (1940) Let's Face It! (1941) By Jupiter (1942) (replacement for Constance Moore) My Dear Public (1943) Jackpot (1944) Bloomer Girl (1945; 1947; 1949) High Button Shoes (1947) Love Life (1948) Arms and the Girl (1950) Make a Wish (1951) Mr. President (1962) No Hard Feelings (1973) Applause (1973) Plaza Suite (1975) Wonderful Town (1975) The Secret Affairs of Mildred Wild (1977) Call Me Madam (1979) Cactus Flower (1984) Prince of Central Park (1989) (replacement for Jo Anne Worley) The Bermuda Avenue Triangle (1997)