If you were a TV producer in the 1950s, Peggy King was dream talent. She could sing, act and play off comedians—all while seemingly relaxed and sincere. She wasn't a singing stylist like Peggy Lee or Patti Page, but when it came to doing the industrial work of a weekly live television show—with scripts, rehearsals, impeccable timing, comedy and making the headliner look great, Peggy was perfect.
Yesterday, in Part 1 of my interview with Peggy, she talked about growing up in a small town in Pennsylvania and how she wound up in television just as new sets were being purchased across the country. Over the course of the 1950s, she co-starred on network TV shows, sang duets with virtually every major singer and became the wholesome darling of comedians like Bob Hope and Jack Benny and a pal of Steve Allen.
Today, Peggy talks about her comic timing, Steve Allen and Mitch Miller as well as Abbott & Costello. Peggy will be singing with her trio at the Sellersville Theater in Sellersville, Penn., on Feb. 1 (go here for more information)...
JazzWax: Were you nervous as the co-star of The George Gobel Show?
Peggy King: By the time I got there in ‘54, I was at home in front of a TV camera. For the next 2½ years while the show was on the air, I performed with every major actor and singer, from Jimmy Stewart to Frank Sinatra. It was a major network show and the ratings were huge. One of the show’s writers came up with “Pretty Perky Peggy King” and it stuck. I didn’t mind. My aim was to save enough to buy my folks a house—and in 1954 I did.
JW: They must have been overjoyed.
PK: They were. My father wasn’t from a fancy family. He worked his whole life. Mother’s parents had died and she was raised in an orphanage. When I became famous, people followed them down the street. My fame scared them and I felt bad.
JW: You must have known Dinah Shore while at NBC.
PK: I did. My dressing room was right next to hers. She was so lovely and very much a lady. She could not have been kinder to me. If she passed my dressing room while I was rehearsing, she'd always pop in with a kind word. She’d say, “I love how you did this or that.” It’s kind of mind-boggling that Dinah would say that to me.
JW: In the early days of television, you must have been something of a celebrity in Los Angeles, as the suburbs and TV viewership grew.
PK: It’s funny, I actually was. Debbie Reynolds and I remained friends after I left MGM. One night, while I was still on George’s show, Debbie, Jane Powell and I went to the movies. As we walked down Hollywood Boulevard to the theater, people on the street recognized only me. Back then, people lived for TV. It was new and convenient and more intimate than the movies. The three of us laughed our heads off. Debbie and Jane were happy not to be recognized. [Photo above of Peggy King with Dick Powell and his wife, June Allyson in Las Vegas in 1953]
JW: You also recorded singles and albums for Columbia. How did that happen?
PK: After three months on the George Gobel Show, Mitch Miller called to sign me to Columbia. I recorded my first album in Hollywood with Jerry Vale—Girl Meets Boy (1955), with the Percy Faith Orchestra. At that point, I had been on TV and in plays as well as in films. I had done it all and was very comfortable in the recording studio. When we sang song from the album on TV, Jerry was a little nervous. He had never been on TV before. We did our duets holding hands.
JW: You’ve always had a young-sounding voice.
PK: Yes, there was always a teenage quality to my voice. People told me that all the time. It’s probably because I never smoked. I like that people thought I sounded like the girl next door. That’s the way I was portrayed on George’s show. I might add, George was the dearest man in show business. He wasn’t in love with himself. The first month we were on, when people in the press were calling me and my picture was in one of those Hollywood magazines, George said, “You’re really getting famous.” He never felt angry or envious. He knew that the more popular I became, the more popular his show would become.
JW: You also worked with your share of top comedians. Was that tricky—making sure you didn’t laugh too soon?
PK: Jack Benny was my favorite. The strange thing is he was anything but tight with his money. He was a very generous guy. I did a five-week tour with him. He thought I was a good straight-man. It was hard not to laugh at Jack.
JW: How did you avoid doing that and blowing his jokes?
PK: It has to do with being an actress. You develop a sense of timing. I learned my timing from Jack and Bob Hope. The trick is to listen very carefully to what’s being said, even though you’ve rehearsed it. When Jack or Bob delivered the line, I had a way of counting to myself, “One, two—then I'd make a little face,” which would compound audience laughter. You have to put the punch line out of your mind and imagine you haven’t heard it before. Otherwise, you’d instinctively telegraph it. Working with Jack was a little harder than most because he made those great faces on his own. So I had to avoid laughing and wait until he finished completely before making my face. I also did this with TV, in general. I just thought of it as radio with everybody staring at you. I got to the point where I didn’t think about the lens much. I just thought about what I was doing.
JW: I'm curious about early television. How would a typical week on the Gobel show go?
PK: We’d come in on Tuesday afternoon and just read through the script. Then we’d take the script home and work on it at home. I’d fall into it and read my lines out loud to remember them. Once I saw a script and went through it, I knew it cold. My brain just worked that way. On Wednesday, we’d start blocking—marking off where each of us would stand, who’s going to talk when and what’s going to happen next. Everyone had a different color tape. Mine was red and George’s was blue. On Thursday we’d work with John Scott Trotter and just the band’s rhythm section. Friday was a full dress rehearsal, which left me with very little time to get a dress fitted. Eventually I had a model with my proportions stand in for the fittings. Saturday was the show, when we’d often had a guest.
JW: Did you ever sing a duet with a famous guest and the other person forgot a line?
PK: Plenty of times. I can remember staring into famous faces and suddenly saw nothing there. Singing a duet is like performing in a live play. You don’t have a chance to take anything back. In radio at least you have a script in hand. On TV, I’d see panic crawling across the other person’s face. That's when I'd try to throw them a line. Or I would sing the line right in their face or I’d sing their line. I was so used to looking out for trouble and thinking on my feet.
JW: You started appearing on Steve Allen's shows in the late 1950s. What was he like?
PK: Steve was a wonderful, generous man. My favorite clip was Steve introducing me on my birthday in 1958. Steve was more of an actor than George [Gobel]. I always felt like Steve’s little sister. He was so natural. Maybe I learned that from him. I’d try to imitate the way he behaved . I also learned timing from Steve—how long to hang onto something and how long to stare at someone before moving on. Steve was so cool and natural it was almost like he was going off to sleep. Bing was like that. It's the look in their eyes. Zero panic, full control.
JW: You were in Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy (1955). How did you meet them?
PK: I used to open for Bud and Lou when they did their act. They had tracked me down after they saw me at MGM. They asked me to go on the road with them. Nobody was better at getting audience to commiserate with him than Lou. That wasn’t easy, and I had to watch that with George. Linger too long with that audience glance and it looks like you’re making fun of the other person. What I finally ended up doing is making myself seem younger than George. This made me George’s little sister rather than his love interest. I did it without being sexy and avoided flirting with him.
JW: Did you ever want to host your own show?
PK: No, I never gave it much thought. Dinah was unhappy doing her show. In fact, I never knew anyone who was happy headlining a TV show. They never could relax because everything was on their shoulders. On the George Gobel Show, it wasn’t my show—it was George’s. So I could be more relaxed. At one point NBC talked to me about a show. I told them I just liked being the girl on the show. When I saw what George had to go through, I realized that you didn’t have a life at all. Many ended up drinking. My father was an alcoholic and I wanted to stay away from that.
JW: Your recordings for Columbia were straight-up pop, yet you could swing.
PK: It was my big band experience. I wanted to record jazz, and you can see that I could do it when I was on Bobby Troup’s Stars of Jazz in '58, when I was engaged to Andre Previn. I always had that touch of jazz. The problem is Mitch Miller wanted me to stay a little girl. Mitch would give me these awful songs and tell me no one else could sing them. I learned later that they were actually the songs nobody else wanted to sing. [Pictured above, Peggy is joined here by fellow Columbia Records recording artists Mitch Miller, Guy Mitchell, Percy Faith, Lu Ann Sims and Tony Bennett in a cross-country tour on behalf of the American Cancer Society]
JW: So you were trapped.
PK: For whatever reason, Mitch didn’t think of me as a woman but as a child. Mitch wanted a commercial sound from me and that was it. He had arrangements written that confined me to the next Judy or a 14-year-old. Jo Stafford once told me that Mitch was tough to handle on a record date. You simply didn’t have any say. When recorded for him, I’d do four songs in three days and there were no second takes. It had nothing to do with me. There was Mitch and there was the rest of the world. Once you signed a contract, it was hard to get out of it. Not until I was able to get away from Columbia and record on my own was I able to sing jazzier material. [Pictured above, Peggy King with Jo Stafford]
JW: How did you meet your husband, Sam Rudofker?
PK: One day in 1960, when I was performing at Mr. Kelly’s in Chicago, columnist Irv Kupcinet brought him in. Irv said later it was like watching someone fall off a roof. He told me Sam (above) said, “She’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” I think Irv did that deliberately, to fix us up. I knew within a week that I was going to quit the business and marry him. In 1961 we married.
JW: Were you happy to give up show business?
PK: Frankly, I had had it up to here with the business. I wanted a family. After I met Sam, I knew he was the one. He had this thing about me. I just knew I’d be safe and happy with him, that he’d give me the freedom to be me and that he’d be nice to my parents. Sam owned After Six, the Philadelphia formal-wear company. In his hands, I knew I’d be in good care. He had two boys when I met him. I knew I wanted to have children with him. I was 30. Sam was so charming. The best man I ever knew. Nothing icky about him. He had quite a vocabulary and was witty. We had two children—a son, Jonathan, and a daughter, Suzy. I lost Jonathan about 10 years ago. He was a brilliant violinist. My daughter is wonderful and beautiful.
JW: How would you prefer to be remembered?
PK: As an actress who sings. I’d like to think someone would read that.
JazzWax notes: For more on Peggy King, including rare audio clips, visit her site here.
JazzWax clips: Here's Peggy King on the Steve Allen Show in 1958 (the sound is a little rubbery)...
Here's Peggy King on What's My Line? (at 19:15)...
Here's a career-spanning video...
Yesterday, in Part 1 of my interview with Peggy, she talked about growing up in a small town in Pennsylvania and how she wound up in television just as new sets were being purchased across the country. Over the course of the 1950s, she co-starred on network TV shows, sang duets with virtually every major singer and became the wholesome darling of comedians like Bob Hope and Jack Benny and a pal of Steve Allen.
Today, Peggy talks about her comic timing, Steve Allen and Mitch Miller as well as Abbott & Costello. Peggy will be singing with her trio at the Sellersville Theater in Sellersville, Penn., on Feb. 1 (go here for more information)...
JazzWax: Were you nervous as the co-star of The George Gobel Show?
Peggy King: By the time I got there in ‘54, I was at home in front of a TV camera. For the next 2½ years while the show was on the air, I performed with every major actor and singer, from Jimmy Stewart to Frank Sinatra. It was a major network show and the ratings were huge. One of the show’s writers came up with “Pretty Perky Peggy King” and it stuck. I didn’t mind. My aim was to save enough to buy my folks a house—and in 1954 I did.
JW: They must have been overjoyed.
PK: They were. My father wasn’t from a fancy family. He worked his whole life. Mother’s parents had died and she was raised in an orphanage. When I became famous, people followed them down the street. My fame scared them and I felt bad.
JW: You must have known Dinah Shore while at NBC.
PK: I did. My dressing room was right next to hers. She was so lovely and very much a lady. She could not have been kinder to me. If she passed my dressing room while I was rehearsing, she'd always pop in with a kind word. She’d say, “I love how you did this or that.” It’s kind of mind-boggling that Dinah would say that to me.
JW: In the early days of television, you must have been something of a celebrity in Los Angeles, as the suburbs and TV viewership grew.
PK: It’s funny, I actually was. Debbie Reynolds and I remained friends after I left MGM. One night, while I was still on George’s show, Debbie, Jane Powell and I went to the movies. As we walked down Hollywood Boulevard to the theater, people on the street recognized only me. Back then, people lived for TV. It was new and convenient and more intimate than the movies. The three of us laughed our heads off. Debbie and Jane were happy not to be recognized. [Photo above of Peggy King with Dick Powell and his wife, June Allyson in Las Vegas in 1953]
JW: You also recorded singles and albums for Columbia. How did that happen?
PK: After three months on the George Gobel Show, Mitch Miller called to sign me to Columbia. I recorded my first album in Hollywood with Jerry Vale—Girl Meets Boy (1955), with the Percy Faith Orchestra. At that point, I had been on TV and in plays as well as in films. I had done it all and was very comfortable in the recording studio. When we sang song from the album on TV, Jerry was a little nervous. He had never been on TV before. We did our duets holding hands.
JW: You’ve always had a young-sounding voice.
PK: Yes, there was always a teenage quality to my voice. People told me that all the time. It’s probably because I never smoked. I like that people thought I sounded like the girl next door. That’s the way I was portrayed on George’s show. I might add, George was the dearest man in show business. He wasn’t in love with himself. The first month we were on, when people in the press were calling me and my picture was in one of those Hollywood magazines, George said, “You’re really getting famous.” He never felt angry or envious. He knew that the more popular I became, the more popular his show would become.
JW: You also worked with your share of top comedians. Was that tricky—making sure you didn’t laugh too soon?
PK: Jack Benny was my favorite. The strange thing is he was anything but tight with his money. He was a very generous guy. I did a five-week tour with him. He thought I was a good straight-man. It was hard not to laugh at Jack.
JW: How did you avoid doing that and blowing his jokes?
PK: It has to do with being an actress. You develop a sense of timing. I learned my timing from Jack and Bob Hope. The trick is to listen very carefully to what’s being said, even though you’ve rehearsed it. When Jack or Bob delivered the line, I had a way of counting to myself, “One, two—then I'd make a little face,” which would compound audience laughter. You have to put the punch line out of your mind and imagine you haven’t heard it before. Otherwise, you’d instinctively telegraph it. Working with Jack was a little harder than most because he made those great faces on his own. So I had to avoid laughing and wait until he finished completely before making my face. I also did this with TV, in general. I just thought of it as radio with everybody staring at you. I got to the point where I didn’t think about the lens much. I just thought about what I was doing.
JW: I'm curious about early television. How would a typical week on the Gobel show go?
PK: We’d come in on Tuesday afternoon and just read through the script. Then we’d take the script home and work on it at home. I’d fall into it and read my lines out loud to remember them. Once I saw a script and went through it, I knew it cold. My brain just worked that way. On Wednesday, we’d start blocking—marking off where each of us would stand, who’s going to talk when and what’s going to happen next. Everyone had a different color tape. Mine was red and George’s was blue. On Thursday we’d work with John Scott Trotter and just the band’s rhythm section. Friday was a full dress rehearsal, which left me with very little time to get a dress fitted. Eventually I had a model with my proportions stand in for the fittings. Saturday was the show, when we’d often had a guest.
JW: Did you ever sing a duet with a famous guest and the other person forgot a line?
PK: Plenty of times. I can remember staring into famous faces and suddenly saw nothing there. Singing a duet is like performing in a live play. You don’t have a chance to take anything back. In radio at least you have a script in hand. On TV, I’d see panic crawling across the other person’s face. That's when I'd try to throw them a line. Or I would sing the line right in their face or I’d sing their line. I was so used to looking out for trouble and thinking on my feet.
JW: You started appearing on Steve Allen's shows in the late 1950s. What was he like?
PK: Steve was a wonderful, generous man. My favorite clip was Steve introducing me on my birthday in 1958. Steve was more of an actor than George [Gobel]. I always felt like Steve’s little sister. He was so natural. Maybe I learned that from him. I’d try to imitate the way he behaved . I also learned timing from Steve—how long to hang onto something and how long to stare at someone before moving on. Steve was so cool and natural it was almost like he was going off to sleep. Bing was like that. It's the look in their eyes. Zero panic, full control.
JW: You were in Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy (1955). How did you meet them?
PK: I used to open for Bud and Lou when they did their act. They had tracked me down after they saw me at MGM. They asked me to go on the road with them. Nobody was better at getting audience to commiserate with him than Lou. That wasn’t easy, and I had to watch that with George. Linger too long with that audience glance and it looks like you’re making fun of the other person. What I finally ended up doing is making myself seem younger than George. This made me George’s little sister rather than his love interest. I did it without being sexy and avoided flirting with him.
JW: Did you ever want to host your own show?
PK: No, I never gave it much thought. Dinah was unhappy doing her show. In fact, I never knew anyone who was happy headlining a TV show. They never could relax because everything was on their shoulders. On the George Gobel Show, it wasn’t my show—it was George’s. So I could be more relaxed. At one point NBC talked to me about a show. I told them I just liked being the girl on the show. When I saw what George had to go through, I realized that you didn’t have a life at all. Many ended up drinking. My father was an alcoholic and I wanted to stay away from that.
JW: Your recordings for Columbia were straight-up pop, yet you could swing.
PK: It was my big band experience. I wanted to record jazz, and you can see that I could do it when I was on Bobby Troup’s Stars of Jazz in '58, when I was engaged to Andre Previn. I always had that touch of jazz. The problem is Mitch Miller wanted me to stay a little girl. Mitch would give me these awful songs and tell me no one else could sing them. I learned later that they were actually the songs nobody else wanted to sing. [Pictured above, Peggy is joined here by fellow Columbia Records recording artists Mitch Miller, Guy Mitchell, Percy Faith, Lu Ann Sims and Tony Bennett in a cross-country tour on behalf of the American Cancer Society]
JW: So you were trapped.
PK: For whatever reason, Mitch didn’t think of me as a woman but as a child. Mitch wanted a commercial sound from me and that was it. He had arrangements written that confined me to the next Judy or a 14-year-old. Jo Stafford once told me that Mitch was tough to handle on a record date. You simply didn’t have any say. When recorded for him, I’d do four songs in three days and there were no second takes. It had nothing to do with me. There was Mitch and there was the rest of the world. Once you signed a contract, it was hard to get out of it. Not until I was able to get away from Columbia and record on my own was I able to sing jazzier material. [Pictured above, Peggy King with Jo Stafford]
JW: How did you meet your husband, Sam Rudofker?
PK: One day in 1960, when I was performing at Mr. Kelly’s in Chicago, columnist Irv Kupcinet brought him in. Irv said later it was like watching someone fall off a roof. He told me Sam (above) said, “She’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” I think Irv did that deliberately, to fix us up. I knew within a week that I was going to quit the business and marry him. In 1961 we married.
JW: Were you happy to give up show business?
PK: Frankly, I had had it up to here with the business. I wanted a family. After I met Sam, I knew he was the one. He had this thing about me. I just knew I’d be safe and happy with him, that he’d give me the freedom to be me and that he’d be nice to my parents. Sam owned After Six, the Philadelphia formal-wear company. In his hands, I knew I’d be in good care. He had two boys when I met him. I knew I wanted to have children with him. I was 30. Sam was so charming. The best man I ever knew. Nothing icky about him. He had quite a vocabulary and was witty. We had two children—a son, Jonathan, and a daughter, Suzy. I lost Jonathan about 10 years ago. He was a brilliant violinist. My daughter is wonderful and beautiful.
JW: How would you prefer to be remembered?
PK: As an actress who sings. I’d like to think someone would read that.
JazzWax notes: For more on Peggy King, including rare audio clips, visit her site here.
JazzWax clips: Here's Peggy King on the Steve Allen Show in 1958 (the sound is a little rubbery)...
Here's Peggy King on What's My Line? (at 19:15)...
Here's a career-spanning video...
This story appears courtesy of JazzWax by Marc Myers.
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