Ginny Simms; Singer, Radio Personality

Ginny Simms, big band singer who performed in such films as “Broadway Rhythm” and “Night and Day” and had a national radio show in the 1940s, died Monday. She was 81.

Miss Simms died of a heart attack at Desert Hospital in Palm Springs, said her husband of 32 years, Donald Eastvold Sr.

A native of San Antonio, Tex., who studied piano at Fresno State Teachers College, Miss Simms earned her initial fame as the lead singer for Kay Kyser’s band in the 1930s.

She followed Kyser to Hollywood and made her first three films with his orchestra--”That’s Right, You’re Wrong” in 1939, “You’ll Find Out” in 1940 and “Playmates” in 1941.

The singer went on to do such films as “Here We Go Again” with Fibber McGee and Molly and Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy in 1942; “Broadway Rhythm” with George Murphy and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in 1944; “Shady Lady” with Charles Coburn in 1945, and “Night and Day” with Cary Grant portraying composer Cole Porter in 1946.

Frequently on the Hit Parade with such songs as “Don’t Ever Change,” Miss Simms got her own network radio show, “The Ginny Simms Show.”

She also segued into a second career away from the limelight as a decorator and developer.

Her interest began when she married millionaire hotel magnate Hyatt R. von Dehn, who started the Hyatt hotel chain. She decorated some of his first hotels as well as their Beverly Hills homes until their divorce in 1951.

After a brief marriage to oilman Robert Calhoun in 1953, Miss Simms returned to the concert stage for a few years. But touring ended when Washington state Atty. Gen. Donald W. Eastvold Sr. insisted on meeting her backstage.

“The next day I received the largest bouquet of roses I have ever seen and an urgent message that read, ‘I’m sending my yacht for you,’ ” she said years later. “I admitted that was a first. We’ve been happy ever since.”

Locating in Palm Springs after their marriage in 1962, the couple developed properties and she decorated resorts in Palm Springs and Washington, Minnesota and Hawaii, and throughout Mexico and in Spain. Their company is now called World International Vacation Club.

In addition to her husband, Miss Simms is survived by her two sons by Von Dehn, David and Conrad, and Eastvold’s five children, Carl, Donald Jr., Diane, Shawn and Sharon, and 13 grandchildren.

Services are scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Palm Springs.