Jack Whiting (actor)
Jack Whiting (actor)
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Jack Whiting (actor)

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Jack Whiting (actor)

Jack Whiting (born Albert Draper Whiting, Jr.; June 22, 1901 – February 15, 1961) was an American actor, singer and dancer whose career ran from the early 1920s through the late 1950s, playing leading men or major supporting figures.

He performed in 30+ musicals on Broadway, including Stepping Stones (1923–1924), Hold Everything! (1928–1929), Take A Chance (1932–1933), Hooray for What! (1937–1938), Hold On to Your Hats (1940–1941), Hazel Flagg (1953) and The Golden Apple (1954). As a dancer, his talent was likened to Fred Astaire's and Gene Kelly's. He starred in London's West End premieres of Anything Goes (1935–1936) and On Your Toes (1937), and recorded medleys from these shows while in England. As a singer, he enjoyed great success with a few hit songs, such as "You're the Cream in My Coffee" (1928), "I've Got Five Dollars" (1931), and "Every Street's A Boulevard In Old New York" (1953).

Whiting acted in theatre plays like Aren't We All? (1923), Design for Living (1943), The Overtons (1945), and A Girl Can Tell (1953), and toured nationally with Arsenic and Old Lace (1941–1942 with Erich von Stroheim, 1943 with Boris Karloff, and 1944 with Bela Lugosi), and with the musicals The Red Mill (1947), High Button Shoes (1948–1949, 1950), and Gay Divorce (1950).

Whiting also starred in a handful of films during the 1930s, including the British musical Sailing Along (1938) with Jessie Matthews, and the American comedy Give Me a Sailor (1938) with Martha Raye, Bob Hope and Betty Grable. He featured in a dozen popular television shows in the 1950s, as his career drew to a close. In 1953, he won the 10th Annual Donaldson Award for Best Musical Supporting Performance in Hazell Flagg, and came second in 1954, for his role in The Golden Apple.

Whiting was born on June 22, 1901, in Philadelphia, where he worked as a stenographer before going on the vaudeville stage as a young amateur actor with the Mask and Wig Club at the University of Pennsylvania, and developing a career as a singer and dancer, often portraying a smiling, blond leading man or a major supporting character.

Whiting's debut on Broadway was in the 1922 edition of Ziegfeld Follies, in which he sang "Flappers" with the Connor Twins (sisters Thelma and Velma) during a dance by Jimmy Nervo. His career took off and he featured in many musicals where, as stated by Broadway chronicler Thomas Hischak: "he played the all-American boy who gets the all-American girl". In September 1922, he joined the cast of Orange Blossoms, to play one of the eight "Gentlemen in the case" with whom he sang three songs: "On the Riviera", "Orange Blossoms" and "Let's Not Get Married" (all by Victor Herbert and Buddy DeSylva). The following April, he appeared as Bruce in Cinders, again in a group of nine gentlemen singing "I'm Simply Mad about the Boys", "You and I", "The Argentine Arago", and "Cinders" (all by Rudolf Friml and Edward Clark).

In May 1923, Whiting appeared as Martin Steele with Leslie Howard in the Broadway staging of the drawing room comedy Aren't We All?, which ran for 32 performances. In November, he played the role of Captain Paul in the musical comedy Stepping Stones (1923–1924), and sang "In Love With Love" alongside the other principal characters, plus two more songs with the rest of the Company: "Babbling Babette" and "Rose Potpourri Finale". Stepping Stones ran for 11 months and 281 performances, ending on October 4, 1924. Exactly one month later, he was playing Alfred Weatherby in Annie Dear (1924–1925), in which he joined other cast members to sing "The Only Girl" (by Clifford Grey and Sigmund Romberg) and "Help, Help, Help" (by Clare Kummer), and to dance in "A Comic Fantasy" (also by Kummer). In October and November 1925, he played Larry Patton in When You Smile and sang "One Little Girl" with the Girls in the cast, as well as "Gee, We Get Along" and "Oh, What a Girl", both with Wynne Gibson (all songs by Phil Cook and Tom Johnstone). During the latter song, Whiting and Gibson also performed a dumbshow duet to the orchestra's mock sounds of flute, horn and saxophone in musical conversation.

From March to May 1926, he played Tommy Lansing in Rainbow Rose and sang "Jealous" with Billy Tichenor and Dancers, "If You Were Someone Else and Someone Else Were Only Here" with Shirley Sherman and Ensemble, and "Let's Get Married" with Billy Tichenor (all songs by Owen Murphy and Harold Levey). In September, he played Billy Shannon in The Ramblers, in which he sang "All Alone Monday" and "You Smiled at Me", both with Marie Saxon and Chorus, and reprised "All Alone Monday" with Saxon, Eleanor Dawn, Blaine Cordner and Chorus (all songs by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby). This show ran for 289 performances, closing on May 28, 1927. He played Robert Bennett in Yes, Yes, Yvette which opened on October 3, 1927, and closed on November 5, after only 40 performances. He sang "My Lady" (by Ben Jerome and Frank Crumit) and "How'd You Like To?" (by Irving Caesar, and music by Stephen Jones), both with Jeanette MacDonald. Despite the show's short-lived run, Charles Brackett nonetheless wrote in The New Yorker that Whiting was "certainly the most promising jeune premier in his department."

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