Julie London

[Miguel]

Haley performed a Julie London tune the other night. The post below I started on March 16th and saved as a draft that day around 11:30 PM. I'm posting it now "as is."

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Julie London was an actress on Emergency!.

Her ex-husband, (Jack) Webb (of Dragnet fame), was executive producer for the series Emergency!, and in 1972 he hired both his ex-wife and her husband, Troup, for key roles as head nurse Dixie McCall and emergency-room physician Dr. Joe Early respectively.

As a kid, I didn't watch that show much. But I remembered her as an attractive older woman. On Saturday, I happened to catch the opening of a rerun of the show and saw her name.

It sounded vaguely familiar, so I Googled it.

I learned:

London recorded 32 albums in a career that began in 1955 with a live performance at the 881 Club in Los Angeles.[6] Billboard named her the most popular female vocalist for 1955, 1956, and 1957. She was the subject of a 1957 Life cover article in which she was quoted as saying, "It's only a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of oversmoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate."

...London's most famous single, "Cry Me a River", was written by her high-school classmate Arthur Hamilton and produced by Troup.[8] The recording became a million-seller after its release in December 1955 and also sold on reissue in April 1983 from the attention brought by a Mari Wilson cover. London performed the song in the film The Girl Can't Help It (1956), and her recording gained later attention in the films Passion of Mind (2000) and V for Vendetta (2006). The song "Yummy Yummy Yummy" was featured on the HBO television series Six Feet Under and appears on its soundtrack album. London's "Must Be Catchin'" was featured in the 2011 premiere episode of the ABC series Pan Am.

...Though primarily remembered as a singer, London also made more than 20 films. Her widely regarded beauty and poise (she was a pinup girl prized by GIs during World War II) contrasted strongly with her pedestrian appearance and streetwise acting technique (much parodied by impersonators). One of her strongest performances came in Man of the West (1958), starring Gary Cooper and directed by Anthony Mann, in which her character, the film's only woman, is abused and humiliated by an outlaw gang.

In 2006, the BBC did a documentary on her:



At one point, shades of Lady Gaga, they say the record label claimed her album covers sold as many records as her talent.