She’ll Chart Her Peaks With Vallee
Rudy Vallee--America’s first pop singing sensation, a radio pioneer, movie and Broadway star--was one heck of a romantic.
So romantic, says his fourth wife, that Vallee never forgot the day they met. So romantic, she says, that not long before he died in 1986 at age 85, slumped in his wheelchair, he whispered to her: “You were a vision of Venus walking out of the water. I wanted you immediately.”
Eleanor Vallee was a teenager when she met the middle-aged crooner at King’s Beach in Lake Tahoe in the 1940s.
“He really was a romantic man,” she says. “He enjoyed champagne and music, and he enjoyed women and looking at beautiful ladies. He liked the long nails and having me dress in high heels and wear satin because it’s soft to the touch.”
Vallee writes about her four-decade relationship with the legendary megaphone-carrying entertainer in “My Vagabond Lover: An Intimate Biography of Rudy Vallee” (Taylor; $22.95). The book, written with Newport Beach writer Jill Amadio, was published a year ago, but Vallee still promotes it around the country.
She’ll discuss life with Rudy at 1 p.m. Thursday at Borders Books and Music, 25222 El Paseo, Mission Viejo. She’ll also bring along a videocassette compilation of film clips and performances by her husband, whose signature tune was “My Time Is Your Time.”
Speaking from her home near Bel-Air, Vallee recalled that her first “date” with Rudy consisted of him inviting her and her parents to dinner in San Francisco. They liked each another, Vallee recalled, but given her age, their romance was “a gradual thing.”
She added, however: “Once he gave me that first kiss--wow! My eyes lit up and my head went a little rolling to and fro and I thought, ‘That’s not too bad. I must pursue this.’ He felt the same way.”
Married in 1949, the Vallees lived in a sprawling Spanish-style hacienda in the Hollywood Hills, where they threw parties for Cary Grant, Edgar Bergen, Jimmy Durante and other celebrity friends. Many weekends, the Vallees drove to Newport Beach to stay at the Balboa Bay Club.
Vallee, who studied drama in college and appeared in her husband’s nightclub act in the ‘50s and ‘60s, said there wasn’t an age difference between the two of them. “He was a very active man,” she said. “He loved to dance, play tennis and swim.”
Vallee remarried two years after Rudy died. But her second husband has since died and, she said, “I’m single now.”
Does she miss Rudy?
“I still miss him, I do, I do, I do,” she said without hesitation. “We had such fun together, and he was a man bigger than life, a real icon. He had so much to say and do and fun to give. I loved him very much.”
Also this week:
* Poet B. Lynne Zika will read at 5 p.m. today at FACT Gallery, 30812 S. Coast Highway, Laguna Beach.
* Patricia Guiver, author of “Delilah and the Purloined Pooch,” will sign at 1 p.m. today at Mystery Ink/Upchurch-Brown Booksellers, 384 Forest Ave., Laguna Beach.
* Cynthia Muchnick, author of “The Best College Admission Essays,” will speak and sign at 2 p.m. today at Barnes & Noble in Metro Pointe, 901 South Coast Drive, Costa Mesa.
* Marianne Alireza, author of “At the Drop of a Veil,” will speak at a meeting of the Laguna Beach chapter of American Assn. of University Women at 7:15 p.m. Monday in the community room of the Wells Fargo Bank, 260 Ocean Ave., Laguna Beach.
* Poet Mike Cluff will read at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Gypsy Den Cafe and Reading Room in the Lab mall, 2930 Bristol St., Costa Mesa.
* Animal trainer Ralph Helfer, author of “Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant Who Ever Lived,” will speak and sign at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Barnes & Noble in Metro Pointe, 901 South Coast Drive, Costa Mesa.
* “An Evening in the Company of Women,” a poetry reading featuring Orange County poets Ritz Mitzner, Donna Gebron, Monica Brett-Serle, Catherine Spear and Jana, will begin at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Alta Coffee House & Roasting Co., 506 31st St., Newport Beach.
* Connie Merritt, author of “Finding Love (Again!): The Dating Survival Manual for Women Over Thirty,” will speak and sign at 2 p.m. Friday at Borders Books, 429 S. Associated Road, Brea.
* Lawrence R. Smith, author of “The Map of Who We Are,” will read and sign at 1 p.m. Saturday at Upchurch-Brown Booksellers, 384 Forest Ave., Laguna Beach.
* Tim Powers, author of “Earthquake Weather,” will sign at 1 p.m. Saturday at Book Carnival, 348 S. Tustin Ave., Orange.
Send information about book-related events at least 10 days before event to: Dennis McLellan, O.C. Books & Authors, Life & Style, The Times, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.