Ireene Wicker Hammer, 86; Radio’s ‘Singing Lady’

Radio’s “Singing Lady” has died in West Palm Beach, Fla., at age 86.

Ireene Wicker Hammer, who starred, wrote and produced a story-song program for children through 20 years of radio and on into television, died Monday night in a convalescent home where she had lived since the 1985 death of her second husband, Victor J. Hammer, a New York art dealer and brother of Dr. Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corp.

As Ireene Wicker (she had added the extra “e” to her first name on the advice of an numerologist who told her it would bring her prosperity), she starred in some of radio’s first soap operas--”Judy and Jane,” “Painted Dreams” and “Today’s Children”--before creating what came to be one of the most popular shows in radio history. It went on the air in 1931 in Chicago and moved to the NBC Blue network the following year.

Lasted Till 1975

For the next 20 years it was heard regularly and then seen periodically on television until 1975.

Working with only a pianist, she wrote, acted and sang thousands of stories over the air to an audience once estimated at 25 million. Her brightly told tales ranged from medieval fables to true stories about contemporary celebrities. Mrs. Wicker (her first husband Walter was a writer and actor on NBC) was narrator, dialectician and singer on her one-woman show, opening each segment with this theme:

Children, you who wish to hear

Songs and stories, come draw near:

Both young and old come hand-in-hand,

And we’ll be off to story land.

She retold Indian legends, recited poetry and wrote original stories for the early evening show for which she received countless awards, including the Peabody, radio’s highest. The program consistently ranked at the top of juvenile show surveys, primarily because mothers appreciated its contrast to the adventure programs of the day.

Mrs. Wicker came to children’s radio through a Kellogg’s cornflakes executive who handed her a list of nursery rhymes and asked if she could put together a program from them. (Kellogg’s became the show’s long-running sponsor.) She did, played all the parts herself and became known across the country as “The Lady With a Thousand Voices.”

By 1937 she was doing four shows a week for NBC and a 30-minute Sunday program. She attributed her success to her younger years when she began telling stories to her own infant children. “I loved being a child myself,” she told Radio Stars magazine in 1937. “I never wanted to grow up. . . .”

Used Puppets on TV

When TV replaced radio as a favored medium, Mrs. Wicker used puppets to act out her stories and she became their voice.

But her life had a darker side too. In 1942 her 19-year-old son was killed in action with the Royal Canadian Air Force. In the early 1950s she and stripteaser Gypsy Rose Lee were falsely accused by Red Channels, a private publication capable of blacklisting actors and writers, of being Communist supporters. The accusations were later withdrawn.

In 1986 a claim was filed on her behalf by her daughter to remove Armand Hammer as executor of her husband’s $1.5-million estate, but a court ruled in Hammer’s favor.

That daughter, Nancy Eilan of Stamford, Conn., survives her.