Also Hope

The warm-eyed brunette who walked briskly up to the microphone in Manhattan's Hotel Plaza one night last week had never looked or sung better. Nightclubbers found it a bit hard to realize that there was a time, seven years ago, when it seemed certain that Jane Froman would never sing again.

That was after the Lisbon Clipper carrying Jane to a U.S.O. tour of England and North Africa crashed in Portugal's Tagus River (TIME, March 8, 1943). Her right leg was nearly severed, her left leg broken and one arm badly injured. But game Jane Froman refused to let anybody ring down the curtain on her career. She had started on that career as a student at the University of Missouri, when, as a journalism major, she wangled the lead in a college musical. She continued to develop her home-trained voice at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, helped pay her way by singing both blues and classics on Cincinnati's WLW. By the mid-'30s Jane Froman had become one of the most popular radio stars in the U.S., had appeared in two Ziegfeld Follies and in a couple of Hollywood shows.

Since the Lisbon crash, Jane has spent most of her time in & out of hospitals, undergone 25 operations. But she never let her big, throaty voice get out of form. She went back on the European U.S.O. circuit for a 30,000-mile trek while still in a cast, plugged away at sporadic nightclub and radio dates, first from a wheelchair, then on crutches.

Last week Jane had clearly won her fight. Her strong, disciplined voice, clear diction and exact phrasing, bridging the gap between torch and classical, made most of the new ballads she sang sound better than they really were. Younger singers could take pointers from the confident way she wrapped her voice around such oldies as Get Happy, Embraceable You and I've Got You Under My Skin. Not only could she get around a nightclub floor without a trace of a limp, she was spending her spare time on the golf course, trying to regain her low-80s game.

With a handful of TV and club offers to choose from, and with her life story scheduled for January production in Hollywood, Jane was feeling fine. She thought her film biography might do some good for others. "I certainly want it to be entertaining," she said. "But also I want people to get hope from it."

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