Alice Faye (born Alice Jeane Leppert on May 5, 1915 – May 9, 1998) was an American actress and singer, remembered first for her stardom and then feud at 20th Century Fox and, later, as the radio comedy partner of her second husband, bandleader-comedian Phil Harris.

Early life

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Born in New York City, she was the daughter of a New York police officer of German descent and his Irish-American wife, Charley and Alice Leppert. Faye's entertainment career began in vaudeville as a chorus girl, before she moved to Broadway and George White's Scandals in the late 1920s. By this time, she had adopted her stage name and first reached a radio audience on Rudy Vallee's hit, The Fleischmann Hour (1932-1934), where she may have met her future husband and comedy partner Harris for the first time.

Film career

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Meanwhile, she got her first major film break in 1934, when Lillian Harvey abandoned the lead role in a film version of George White's Scandals, in which Vallee was also to appear. Hired first to perform a musical number with Vallee, Faye ended up as the female lead. And she became a hit with film audiences of the 1930s, particularly when Fox mastermind producer Darryl F. Zanuck made her his protege. He softened Faye from a wisecracking show girl to the youthful but somewhat motherly figure she played in a few of Shirley Temple's hit films.

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