Gertrude Niesen was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 torch singer

Torch Singer

Torch Singer is a 1933 film made by Paramount Pictures, directed by Alexander Hall and George Somnes, and starring Claudette Colbert, Ricardo Cortez and David Manners and Lyda Roberti.The screenplay was written by Lenore J...

, actress, comedienne and songwriter who achieved popular success in musicals

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 and films in the 1930s and 1940s.

Life and career

She was born in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, and took up singing as a career in the early 1930s, first appearing (credited as Gertrude Nissen) with Artie Shaw

Artie Shaw

Arthur Jacob Arshawsky , better known as Artie Shaw, was an American jazz clarinetist, composer, and bandleader. He was also the author of both fiction and non-fiction writings....

 in a Vitaphone

Vitaphone

Vitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...

 short, Yacht Party, in 1932. She recorded for Victor Records in the 1930s, and in 1933 was the first to record the song "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is a show tune written by American composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Otto Harbach for their 1933 operetta Roberta. It was originally recorded by Gertrude Niesen, on 13 October 1933 on the Victor label 24454. It was performed by Irene Dunne for the 1935 film adaptation,...

", written by Jerome Kern

Jerome Kern

Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A...

 and Otto Harbach

Otto Harbach

Otto Abels Harbach, born Otto Abels Hauerbach was an American lyricist and librettist of about 50 musical comedies...

. She appeared in the Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 musical Calling All Stars in 1934, and more successfully in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936

Ziegfeld Follies of 1936

The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 is a musical revue with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, music by Vernon Duke and sketches by Gershwin and David Freedman...

.

She also began to appear regularly in movies, including Top of the Town (1937), Start Cheering

Start Cheering

Start Cheering is a musical motion picture starring Jimmy Durante, Walter Connolly and Joan Perry. It is best remember today for a cameo appearance by The Three Stooges as Campus Firemen, who were Columbia Pictures' short subject headliners at the time...

(1938), and A Night at Earl Carroll's (1940), in which she sang a song that she co-wrote, "I Want to Make with the Happy Times". Her other films included Rookies on Parade (1941), This Is the Army

This Is the Army

This Is the Army is a 1943 American wartime motion picture produced by Hal B. Wallis and Jack L. Warner, and directed by Michael Curtiz, and a wartime musical designed to boost morale in the U.S. during World War II, directed by Sgt. Ezra Stone...

(1943), He's My Guy (1943), and The Babe Ruth Story

The Babe Ruth Story

The Babe Ruth Story is a 1948 baseball film biography of Babe Ruth, the famed New York Yankees slugger. It stars William Bendix as the ballplayer and Claire Trevor as his wife. It was rush released while Ruth himself was still alive. It makes no mention whatsoever of Ruth's first wife,...

(1948). She co-starred with Jackie Gleason

Jackie Gleason

Jackie Gleason was an American comedian, actor and musician. He was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy style, especially by his character Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, a situation-comedy television series. His most noted film roles were as Minnesota Fats in the drama film The...

 in the 1944 stage musical Follow the Girls

Follow the Girls

Follow the Girls is a musical with a book by Guy Bolton, Eddie Davis and Fred Thompson and music and lyrics by Dan Shapiro, Milton Pascal, and Phil Charig....

, in which she sang one of her best-known songs, "I Want To Get Married". She recorded for Decca Records

Decca Records

Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....

 throughout the 1940s, and released a self-titled LP

LP record

The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...

 for the label in 1951. She also appeared on many radio shows, and on TV in the early 1950s.

She died in Hollywood, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

in 1975, aged 63, after a long illness.