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Jane Froman
was born on November 10, 1907 in University City, Missouri, into a large,
musically talented family. At the age of three, she was already singing
with her mother and by the age of 6, people were noting her remarkable
singing voice, although she stuttered badly when speaking. The stutter
started around the time her father left and never returned.
Jane and
her mother returned to the family home in Clinton, where Jane boarded
at a convent school whenever her mother had to leave town to give piano
lessons. It was a lonely childhood, in which she developed an unusually
strong bond with her mother, who was also her voice teacher. Her earliest
singing in public was at church services, where she often sang solo.
In spite of her excellent training in the classics, Jane was drawn
to the popular music of the day -- Gershwin, Berlin, Porter. Stubbornly,
she followed her own instincts in spite of her mother’s objections,
While still a student at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Jane
became an enormously popular singing star on radio, and later sang
with Paul Whiteman’s band in Chicago. During this time she met
Don Ross, also in show business, and married him. Ross became her
manager.
In the early 1930s, Jane and Don went to Hollywood where she made
a couple of movies, but her movie career never took off, as her stutter
could not be covered up in long speaking parts. She appeared in New
York in the Ziegfeld Follies and went on to do a couple of Broadway
plays, and headlined at the hottest night clubs.
Her
career was still climbing when World War II broke out. She was one of
the first performers to volunteer to bring entertainment to the troops
here and abroad. On her USO flight to Europe in February of 1943, her
plane crashed in the Tagus River outside Portugal. One of the few passengers
to survive, although severely injured, she was rescued by the co-pilot
of the plane, John Curtis Burn.
Doctors
wanted to amputate her leg, but miraculously, it was saved, and she
was sent to a convalescent home. John Curtis Burn was also there, recovering
from a broken back. The threat of amputation was with Jane all through
her recovery and eventual comeback, as infection set in again and again.
When Jane
discovered she still had her voice, she was eager to return to work,
and appeared on Broadway in Artists and Models, still in a cast up to
her hip. Beautiful
gowns and long gloves covered her scars, while sets were designed to
accommodate her inability to walk. The show was not great, but Jane
was, and she won the acclaim of critics and the public alike.
While still
on crutches, Jane returned to Europe to fulfill her commitment to the
USO and in 1945 spent three months traveling throughout war-torn Europe
to bring entertainment to the troops and hope to the wounded.
She returned
to the night club circuit, getting around on a platform-on-wheels that
she shared with a piano, a piano player, and a microphone. Standing
upright with the help of a brace and a chain, she moved about the club
floor as the pianist controlled the switches, resulting in an intimate
show where Jane could move through the audience.
Jane’s
marriage to Don Ross was breaking up, and they divorced. Her leg injury
continued to plague her, and she had undergone dozens of operations,
as infection kept undoing all the good that the operations provided.
With each operation, the threat existed that she would lose her leg.
It wasn’t until she met Dr. Cleveland Mather at St. Luke’s
Hospital in New York, who used new and modern techniques to treat her
leg, that she was able to put that worry behind her once and for all.
 In
March, 1948, Jane married John Curtis Burn, the pilot who had rescued
her in the 1943 plane crash. They moved to Coral Gables, Florida, where
Jane could heal in the Florida sun.
After all
the operations, the steady stream of drugs used to ease the pain, and
a deep depression resulting from the last flare-up with her leg, Jane
went into what her doctors called “battle fatigue.” They
urged her to check in to the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas.
She did, and after six months of rest and therapy, was able to leave,
restored in mind and body.
A movie
was made of her life, With a Song in My Heart, with Susan Hayward
in the starring role. Jane’s voice provided the 26 songs on
the soundtrack. Susan Hayward was nominated for an Academy Award for
her performance.
Shortly
after the release of With a Song in My Heart, Jane’s popularity
soared again, and CBS offered Jane her own television show, which
remained on the air through 1955. At about that time, her marriage
to John Burn ended.
In addition
to her show, Jane made frequent guest appearances on Paul Whiteman's Goodyear Revue, Milton
Berle’s Texaco Star Theater, the Jackie Gleason Show, Ed Sullivan’s
Toast of the Town, the Jimmy Durante Show and many other TV shows,
and starred in the biggest night clubs in the country.
   
After a
career that lasted almost three decades, she returned to her home town
of Columbia, Missouri, where she married an old college chum, Rowland
Haw Smith, a newspaperman with the Columbia Daily Tribune. They built
a home and settled down. Her retirement was one of community service
and playing an active role in starting a music colony at Arrow Rock.
Jane’s
health was fragile from years of grueling operations on her leg and
back, and in her last years, she rarely traveled, but fans continued
to write and visit her. On April 22, 1980, she died of cardiac arrest
in her home at the age of 73.
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