Ireene Wicker
| Ireene Wicker | |
|---|---|
Wicker in 1937.
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| Born |
Irene Seaton November 24, 1905 Quincy, Illinois |
| Died | November 17, 1987 (aged 81) West Palm Beach, Florida |
| Occupation | Singer Actress |
Ireene Wicker (November 24, 1905 – November 17, 1987) was an American singer and actress, best known to young radio listeners in the 1930s and 1940s as “The Singing Lady”, which was the title of her radio program.
Wicker was born Irene Seaton in Quincy, Illinois. After studying music and drama at the University of Illinois, she studied at the Goodman School of the Theater in Chicago
Wicker appeared in professional roles at the Goodman Theatre in 1929 and 1930.
Early in Wicker's radio career she changed the spelling of her first name to Ireene, adding the extra ‘e’ as she was told by a numerologist that one more letter would bring her great success.
Her radio show was first sponsored by the Kellogg Company, beginning in 1931. Her show was promoted as America’s first radio network program for children. Despite the title of her show, The Singing Lady, most of it involved Wicker telling adaptations of stories for children, ranging from fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen through to Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. Also in the 1930s and early 1940s, she portrayed Jane Lee on the serial Judy and Jane on NBC-Blue.
In the 1940s, Wicker was a regular on Deadline Drama on NBC and the Blue Network. In the 1950s, she told stories on Big Jon and Sparkie on ABC radio.
Wicker came to television at WJZ-TV in 1949 with The Ireene Wicker Show in which she told fairy tales. She also had a program, The Singing Lady, on ABC-TV (1948-1950).
In 1950 Wicker was one of several broadcasters whose name was included in the book Red Channels, used by many organizations to blacklist anyone who was included as a supposed Communist “sympathizer”. The book charged that she had sponsored a re-election committee for Benjamin J. Davis, a Communist councilman in New York. Although Wicker denied she had even heard of the man, her listing within Red Channels was followed – in what she herself described as a "curious coincidence" – by her sponsor, Kellogg, failing to renew her option for the ABC TV Show. The charges by the House Un-American Activities Committee were later withdrawn with apologies. Another claim, that she sided with leftists during the Spanish Civil War turned out to refer to her support of a fund-raising drive for Spanish refugee children.
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