Patty Andrews, the last of the Andrews Sisters, the jaunty vocal trio whose immensely popular music became part of the patriotic fabric of second World War America, died yesterday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 94.
Lynda Wells, a niece, confirmed the death.
With their jazzy renditions of songs like Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (of Company B), Rum and Coca-Cola and Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else but Me), Patty, Maxene and LaVerne Andrews sold war bonds, boosted morale on the home front, performed with Bing Crosby and with the Glenn Miller Orchestra, made movies and entertained thousands of American troops overseas, for whom the women represented the loves and the land the troops had left behind.
Patty, the youngest, was a soprano and sang lead; Maxene handled the high harmony; and LaVerne, the oldest, took the low notes. They began singing together as children; by the time they were teenagers they made up an accomplished vocal group. Modelling their act on the commercially successful Boswell Sisters, they joined a travelling revue and sang at country fairs and in vaudeville shows. Their big break came in 1937 when they were signed by Decca Records, but their first recording went nowhere.
Their second effort featured the popular standard Nice Work If You Can Get It, but it was the flip side that turned out to be pure gold. The song was a Yiddish show tune, Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen (Means That You're Grand), with new English lyrics by Sammy Cahn, and the Andrews Sisters' version, recorded in 1937, became the top-selling record in the country.
Other hits followed, and in 1940 they were signed by Universal Pictures. They appeared in more than a dozen films during the next seven years - sometimes just singing, sometimes also acting. They made their film debut in Argentine Nights, a 1940 comedy that starred the Ritz Brothers, and the next year appeared in three films with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello: Buck Privates, In the Navy and Hold That Ghost. Their film credits also include Swingtime Johnny (1943), Hollywood Canteen (1944) and the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby comedy Road to Rio (1947).
After selling more than 75 million records, the Andrews Sisters broke up in 1953 when Patty decided to go solo. By 1956 they were together again, but musical tastes were changing and they found it hard to adapt. When LaVerne Andrews died of cancer in 1967, no suitable replacement could be found, and Patty and Maxene soon went their separate ways. Patty continued to perform solo, and Maxene joined the staff of a private college in South Lake Tahoe, California.
Patricia Marie Andrews was born on February 16th, 1918, in Minneapolis. Her father, Peter, was a Greek immigrant who changed his name from Andreos to Andrews when he came to the US Her mother, Olga, was Norwegian.
Like her older sisters, Patty learned to love music as a child (she also became a good tap dancer), and she did not have to be persuaded when Maxene suggested that the sisters form a trio in 1932. She was 14 when they began to perform in public.
As their fame and fortune grew, the sisters came to realize that the public saw them as an entity, not as individuals. In a 1974 interview with The New York Times, Patty explained what that was like: "When our fans used to see one of us, they'd always ask, 'Where are your sisters?' Every time we got an award, it was just one award for the three of us." This could be irritating, she said with a touch of exasperation: "We're not glued together."
The Andrews Sisters re-entered the limelight in the early 1970s when Bette Midler released her own recording of Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, modelled closely on theirs. It reached the Top 10, and its success led to several new compilations of the Andrews Sisters' own hits.
The previous year, Patty Andrews had appeared in a West Coast musical called Victory Canteen, set during the second World War. When the show was rewritten for Broadway and renamed Over Here!, the producers decided that the Andrews Sisters were the only logical choice for the leads. They hired Patty and lured Maxene back into show business as well. The show opened in March 1974 and was the sisters' belated Broadway debut. It was also the last time they sang together.
The sisters got into a bitter money dispute with the producers and with each other, leading to the show's closing in January 1975 and the cancellation of plans for a national tour. After that, the sisters pursued solo careers into the 1990s. They never reconciled and were still estranged when Maxene Andrews died in 1995.
Patty Andrews' first marriage, to movie producer Marty Melcher, lasted two years and ended in divorce in 1949. (Melcher later married Doris Day.) In 1951 she married Wally Weschler, who had been the sisters' pianist and conductor and who later became her manager. They had no children. Weschler died in 2010. Andrews is survived by her foster daughter, Pam DuBois.
A final salute to the Andrews Sisters came in 1991 in the form of Company B, a ballet by the choreographer Paul Taylor subtitled Songs Sung by the Andrews Sisters. The work, which featured nine of the trio's most popular songs, including Rum and Coca-Cola and, of course, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, underscored the enduring appeal of the three sisters from Minneapolis.
New York Times