The penultimate shot of The Jolson Story, 1946, Alfred E. Green/Joseph L. Lewis
I’m gonna sound like a heel for saying this, but I always thought Evelyn Keyes made a better Ruby Keeler than Ruby Keeler did.
Keeler, some of you may recall, had the great good fortune of having been married to World’s Greatest Entertainer and Insufferable Egomaniac Al Jolson from 1928 to 1940. It has long been speculated that Keeler’s own showbiz career flourished under Jolson’s significant influence; to watch Keeler’s game but ultimately hapless attempts to keep up with, say, James Cagney in the “Shanghai Lil” number in Footlight Parade is, to my mind at least, to give such speculations almost inviolable creedence.
Keeler ceased performing after divorcing Jolie (as we fans like to call him; c.f. Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner’s still side-splitting track “Jolson” on 2000 and Thirteen) and refused to speak of The Man when she made a comeback in the ’70s. More to the point, she refused to allow her name to be used in the 1946 biopic The Jolson Story, so the producers just…changed the character’s name, to Julie Benson, and had her starring in the likes of 42nd Street. It isn’t as if the rest of the picture isn’t a fiction either.
Keeler often came off on screen as willfully trying to work some kind of coy little girl effect; by contrast, Evelyn Keyes’ Julie Benson is never less than wholly womanly. Sane, sexy, and sometimes sassy. Keyes’ natural charisma defeats her efforts to make Benson a convincing would-be homebody, and that’s actually fine. Her natural grace makes the few dance moves she shows off in the picture work like a charm.
Keyes had a solid career, but deserved a better one. Less than a decade after walking out on Jolson, she and her brat would be departing for the Catskills, leaving hubby Tom Ewell alone in their Manhattan flat, the better for him to drool over Marilyn Monroe, in Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch. In between, though, she did great work in two under-seen films—1948’s unusual family saga Enchantment, and Joseph Losey’s ahead-of-its-time 1951 thriller The Prowler. Her offscreen life was a vivid one—she was married to John Huston, and then Artie Shaw, for heaven’s sake, and managed to stay married to the notoriously fidgety Shaw (she was his eighth wife—for real) for almost thirty years.
Keyes was 91 when she died on July 4.
One of her best but little-seen performances is in A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, in which she plays the–yes–sexy, sassy genie to Cornel Wilde’s Aladdin. I met her a few times and did a Q&A with her once, and never found her anything but delightful and super-bright. A true loss.
So that’s why Ruby got work! I knew there had to be a backstory, she’s awful. Watching her incredibly inept tapping, I knew there had to be something behind the scenes as to why Busby Berkely kept using using her. I love when she gallumphs around the starge, and the other actors have to tell her, “Kid, you’re great!” I guess Jolson & Keeler are the real Kane & Susan (I can imagine Jolson telling her, “That’s when you have to fight ’em!”)
Ruby danced like she had the heaviest legs in the universe.
Keyes is also good in an undemanding role in Shoot First, a modest but engaging Robert Parrish/Eric Ambler/Joe McCrea thriller shot in England and known there as Rough Shoot, a much better title.
For roles in such films as The Face Behind the Mask, Johnny O’Clock, The Killer That Stalked New York, The Prowler, 99 River Street, and Hell’s Half Acre, she is certainly a noir icon, a fact omitted from her obits.
Just a few months ago I saw her in The Face Behind the Mask, doing an excellent job with a stock character that dated at least all the way back to City Lights. Thank you for this lovely tribute. She was an interesting, bright, vivid woman. I read her autobiography when it came out and now I want to re-read it. She was much kinder to the notoriously difficult John Huston than he was to her, I do remember that.