Ruby Keeler, born Ethel Hilda Keeler, (August 25, 1909– February 28, 1993), was an actress, singer, and dancer most famous for her on-screen coupling with Dick Powell in a string of successful early musicals at Warner Brothers, particularly 42nd Street. From 1928 to 1940, she was married to legendary singer Al Jolson. She retired from show business in the 1940s but made a widely publicized comeback on Broadway in 1971.
Keeler was born in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1909, to a Irish Catholic family. She was the sister of minor actresses, Helen and Gertrude Keeler.
Her father was a truck driver, and when she was three years old, her family packed up and moved to New York City where he knew he could get better pay. But it was not enough: there were six children, and although Keeler was interested in taking dance lessons, the family could not afford to send her.
Keeler attended St. Catherine of Siena parochial school on New York's East Side, and one period each week a dance teacher would come and teach all styles of dance. The teacher saw potential in Keeler and spoke to her mother about Ruby taking lessons at her studio. Although her mother declined, apologizing for the lack of money, the teacher wanted to work with her so badly that she asked her mother if she would bring her to a class lesson on Saturdays, and she agreed.
During the classes, a girl she danced with told her about auditions for chorus girls. The law said you had to be 16 years old, and although they were only 13, they decided to lie about their ages at the audition. It was a tap audition, and there were a lot of other talented girls there. The stage was covered, except for a wooden apron at the front. When it was Ruby's turn to dance, she asked the dance director Julian Mitchell, if she could dance on the wooden part so that her taps could be heard. He did not answer, so she went ahead, walked up to the front of the stage, and started her routine. The director said, "who said you could dance up there?" She replied, "I asked you!" and she got a job in George M. Cohan's The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly (1923), in which she made forty-five dollars a week to help her family.
She was only 14 when she was hired by Nils Granlund, the publicity manager for Loew's Theaters who also served as the stageshow producer for Texas Guinan at Larry Fay's El Fay nightclub, a speakeasy frequented by gangsters. She was noticed by Broadway producer Charles B. Dillingham, who gave her a role in Bye Bye Bonnie, which ran for six months. She then appeared in Lucky and The Sidewalks of New York, also produced by Dillingham. In the latter show, she was seen by Flo Ziegfeld, who sent her bunch of roses and a note, "May I make you a star?". She would appear in Ziegfield's Whoopee! in 1928, but before that, she would get married to Al Jolson, the famous singer.
The two met in Los Angeles (not at Texas Guinan's as he would claim), where Nils Granlund had sent her to assist in Loew's marketing campaign for The Jazz Singer. Their meeting was brief, but Jolson was smitten. Back in New York, he immediately proposed, but was rebuked. However, after a brief courtship Keeler relented. The couple married September 21, 1928 in Port Chester, New York in a private ceremony performed by Surrogate G. A. Slater of Westchester County. The two had hoped to be wed aboard the White Star Liner Olympic, but were informed that company regulations no longer allowed ship's captains to perform "at sea" ceremonies. The two sailed the following morning for a brief honeymoon before she began her tour with Whoopee!; she was 19 and he was 42. The marriage (during which they adopted a son) was a rocky one. They moved to California, which took her away from the limelight. In 1929, at the urging of Ziegfeld, Jolson agreed to let her travel to New York to star in Show Girl.
In 1933, producer Darryl F. Zanuck cast Keeler in the Warner Bros. musical 42nd Street appearing opposite Dick Powell and Bebe Daniels. The film was a huge success due to Busby Berkeley's lavish and innovative choreography. As a result of her performance in 42nd Street, Jack L. Warner gave Keeler a long-term contract and cast her in such hits as Gold Diggers of 1933 and Dames (1934).
After a difficult marriage, Keeler and Jolson were divorced in 1940. Keeler remarried in 1941 to John Homer Lowe. Not anxious to be a movie star, and happy in her second marriage, Keeler left show business in 1941. She went on to raise five children. Lowe died of cancer in 1969.
In 1971, she came out of retirement to star in the hugely successful Broadway revival of the 1920s musical No, No, Nanette, along with fellow Irish-Americans Helen Gallagher and Patsy Kelly. The production was directed by Keeler's 42nd Street director, Busby Berkeley, and choreographed by Donald Saddler. The astounding popularity of the play was part of a renaissance of sorts of all things 20s and early 30s- art deco, tap dancing and Depression Era songs. Keeler, once again, was sought out for interviews; one pre-condition, however, was that she would not talk about Jolson.
Ruby Keeler died of cancer in Rancho Mirage, California, aged 82, and was interred in the Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Orange, California. She has a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6730 Hollywood Blvd.
Ruby Keeler was among the first tap dancing stars in motion pictures. Her style was an Irish Step. Both the shoes and the style are different from regular tap dance. In Keeler's time, instead of metal taps, the soles were wooden and hard. Buck dancers stayed in relatively the same place on stage, and their concern was the rhythm coming from their feet, rather than how they looked on stage. They stayed on the balls of their feet most of time, which meant that their torsos moved very little, and the movements were isolated to below the waist. Because of this style of movement, the early Buck dancers often appeared less graceful in comparison with later tap dancers.
