Nanette Fabray

ABOUT Nanette Fabray

Nanette Fabray was born for show business. She made her screen debut at age three, was playing vaudeville at age six, and was appearing in her first Broadway musical before she was twenty-one. She would remain a fixture on Broadway through the 1940s, returning to her native California in the early 1950s to do film and television. She came back to Broadway in 1962 to star as the First Lady in Irving Berlin's last musical, Mr. President. She was nominated for a Tony^®.

Fabray made her 1941 New York debut in Let's Face It!, a musical comedy written by Herbert Fields and Dorothy Fields with words and music by Cole Porter. The following year, she played Antiope in Rodgers and Hart's By Jupiter, a musical set in the lands of the Amazons. After two short runs – My Dear Public (1943) and Jackpot (1944) – Fabray came in as the replacement for Celeste Holm in the starring role of Bloomer Girl, a 1945 musical by Arlen and Harburg.

In 1947, Nanette Fabray had her first original starring role on Broadway as Sara Longstreet in High Button Shoes (Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn, words and music) and later starred as Susan Cooper in the 1948 Alan Jay Lerner/Kurt Weill musical, Love Life.  Fabray won the Tony^® for Best Actress in a Musical with that role. In 1950, Fabray appeared in Arms and the Girl (music by Morton Gould, lyrics by Dorothy Fields). Her last starring role before going to Hollywood came in the musical Make a Wish in 1951; the book was by Preston Sturges; Hugh Martin provided the music and lyrics.