Born to Show Business

The latest songstress to climb to Manhattan's nightclub big time is a comely, 22-year-old blonde named Marti Stevens. Last week, in the crowded and fashionable Maisonette of the Hotel St. Regis, she was pouring out some of the best mood-spinning that has hit the nightclub belt this winter. Her songs ranged from such wistful numbers as Young-at-Heart and It's Only a Paper Moon to barrelhouse renditions of The Birth of the Bines and Sing, You Sinners. In voice and style. Songstress Stevens managed to remind listeners of a younger Judy Garland.

The resemblance to Garland is no accident. Marti Stevens has been collecting Garland records for a long time, and comparing them with records of the Prohibition Era's Helen Morgan, one of Marti's earliest collecting enthusiasms. She decided that her two favorites had the same vocal knack: "A kind of heartbreak, over-the-rainbow. it's-got-to-happen-tomorrow quality. It kills people. It always kills me." She began to try for the same thing in her own singing.

What is more surprising is that Marti Stevens ever got to be a professional singer. As a youngster she had a French governess, later had a society debut, and was supposed to settle down into the life of a well-to-do Manhattanite. But Marti was-the eldest daughter of Movie Magnate Nicholas M. Schenck. She never got over the procession of show-business stars who came visiting at the Schenck household when Marti was in pigtails. "I just sat in a corner and watched those wonderful people do their tricks." In her teens, she started to collect Helen Morgan records.

Four years ago. Marti decided to leave Sarah Lawrence College (where she was a sophomore) for show business. Unwilling to cash in on her father's name, she changed hers to Stevens. It took her a while to learn to put a song across, and her first few engagements (in Las Vegas, Nev., Chicago, New Orleans) were disappointing. She picked up know-how in the big, brassy clubs of Reno and Montreal. "I learned to give a rough, hip-swinging show in those barns," she says. "If they don't like you in the barns, they just yell 'Get off the floor!'';

Nowadays. Marti Stevens' performance is beginning to strike the public fancy. She has made a record (for M-G-M), landed a June engagement at London's Colony Club, and is aiming for a fall spot in a Broadway musical. She no longer cares if people know that she is Nick Schenck's daughter: "It gets me into booking offices.'' says she, "but to get a job I have to deliver."

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