Gertrude Niesen

Gertrude Niesen was a vocalist who achieved her greatest successes, in music and in movies, during the big-band era. Born in 1911 in New York City, she was a natural singer and as early as 1932, she was featured -- under the name Gertrude Nessen -- along with Artie Shaw in a Vitaphone short called "Yacht Party." In 1934 she was cast in the Broadway musical Calling All Stars, which ran for only a month, but she did rather better a couple of years later, in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, where she had a featured song -- "Isle in the West Indies" -- and enjoyed a three-month run. ...