The Patti Page Oldsmobile Show

I swear I haven’t gone car crazy (today’s earlier post was about TV shows sponsored by Chevrolet). It’s just that this seemed the best angle for me to take on my post about singer Patti Page (Clara Ann Fowler, 1927-2013). And it’s nice to have a theme.

Eddie Cantor once said of Belle Baker that she was great as “Dinah Shore, Patti Page, Peggy Lee, and Judy Garland all rolled into one.” I bring that up to illustrate how iconic Page was during her heyday. From the late ’40s through the late ’50s she was one of the country’s most popular singers, with record sales to prove it. In fact, in terms of strict numbers, Patti Page was the top-charting and best selling female singer of the ’50s. And I bring all this up because, when I was a kid in the 1970s, though she was still going strong, that was by far no longer the case. I had heard the name mentioned from time to time, but out of all of those scores of very popular songs, only a very few had survived in the popular memory, i.e. strongly enough to be known by those to young to have been alive during her height. Of all those songs, I only know “Tennessee Waltz” (1950), the novelty song “The Doggie in the Window” (1953), and the theme song to Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965). As I always do with singers who were before my time, I went to the internet and played all her other hits to prep for this post, since very often it turns out that I know songs without knowing the titles. Nope — dozens of perfectly pleasant hits I had never heard before in my life. This isn’t to cast aspersions. Patti Page had a wonderful voice, and she’s backed by snazzy big bands, and I’m sure I’ll listen more to her over time. It’s just not my era, not my field, and — objectively — not something that lasted in the popular mind.

Page never stopped performing and recording, by the way; she just narrowed her focus to the country and western market starting in the 1960s. Page was originally from rural Oklahoma. Her father was a railroad worker. Her mother and sisters picked cotton. Page was a teenager when she began singing on local radio, naming herself after a sponsor, the Page Milk Company. After regional success she moved to Chicago where Benny Goodman hired her to sing for one of his projects. This led to her being signed as the female artist on Mercury Records in 1946. She was not yet 20.

Movies and television often help us remember bygone figures. There Patti Page’s footprint was pretty small. She only dabbled a little in acting. She’s in the movies Elmer Gantry (1960), Dondi (1961), and Boys’ Night Out (1962), and in episode of Bachelor Father. But she appeared on all the major TV variety shows up through the early 1970s. And she hosted several of her own variety shows. There were Scott Music Hall (1952-53), sponsored by Scott Tissues and The Patti Page Show (1955-56), her first program sponsored by Oldsmobile. Both of these programs were only 15 minutes alone and showcased mainly herself. Her relationship with Oldsmobile continued with The Big Record (1957-58), a half hour show with mostly musical guests like Florence Henderson and Pearl Bailey, and finally The Patti Page Oldsmobile Show (1958-59), a proper variety show with a more diverse menu of acts, such as Shari Lewis, Teresa Brewer, Leslie Uggams, and many others.

Patti Page’s career lasted 66 years! She was still touring and hosting a radio show as late as 2012!

For more on show business history, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and keep an eye out for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.