Dick Webster; Radio and Big Band Singer Began His Career in 1920s

Richard Eugene Webster, radio and big band singer known professionally as Dick Webster, has died at age 85.

He died Sunday at his home in Thousand Oaks where he had lived since his retirement from the entertainment business in 1965.

Webster began his career at age 12 as a violinist with the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Downtown Los Angeles. He later played violin to set the mood for actors while they were shooting silent films.

By 1927, Webster was singing with the Yale Collegians and making such early records for the electric Victrola as “With You.”

He had his own radio show in New York, and in 1930 sang and played violin on West Coast radio stations WMCA and WPCH. The now-defunct Daily Mirror newspaper dubbed him the “Adonis of the Airwaves.”

Webster sang with the Jimmy Grier Orchestra at the Coconut Grove and the Biltmore Bowl and in films for MGM and Paramount, including “Flying Down to Rio” with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and “Poor Little Rich Girl” with Shirley Temple.

In the 1940s, Webster became an artists manager, first handling the Sonny Dunham Orchestra and then working with General Artists Corp.

From 1948 until 1961, he was president of Arena Stars, Inc., exclusively handling Spike Jones. Webster returned to agency management, working with such stars as Johnny Carson and Jimmy Dean.

Webster is survived by his wife, Lucy Ann; three daughters, Nan Jeffries of Thousand Oaks, Judith Mary McHenry of Oxnard, and Vicki Reif of Las Vegas; a sister, Vera G. Ward of San Diego, nine grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.