MGM's house soprano, a trained coloratura dropped into sailor musicals and Technicolor stage adaptations to be sung at and to sing back. The voice is real and exact; the parts around it seldom asked for anything else, and Kiss Me Kate shows what was lost.
Fi1m perspective
In Anchors Aweigh (1945), Gene Kelly turns bandit and leaps across the roofs to reach Kathryn Grayson at a window. She is the window. That is what MGM had her for: the destination at the top of the number, in a yellow or green frock, with a voice that could hold a high note while the man climbed. Grayson was a coloratura soprano, studying from the age of twelve and taught by Frances Marshall of the Chicago Civic Opera, and the studio kept finding reasons for its plots to pause so that she could sing something operatic and the men around her could look up.
Louis B. Mayer heard her sing and signed her as a teenager; she made her debut in Andy Hardy's Private Secretary (1941) and by the middle of the decade she was a leading lady. Anchors Aweigh put her between Frank Sinatra and Kelly, That Midnight Kiss (1949) put her opposite Mario Lanza, and Show Boat (1951) and Kiss Me Kate (1953) put her opposite Howard Keel, the co-star she was matched with three times. Then she left MGM. The Vagabond King (1956) was her last film, and after that she went where the voice was wanted: the stage, opera, occasional television, on into the 1990s.
What works is the singing, and it is not a small thing. The voice is precise and strong, and Show Boat, a Technicolor remake that gives her duets with Keel to fill, is where it is most fully heard. What does not work is what the studio thought it could get away with around her. Our own review of Anchors Aweigh found her Susan Abbott sweet, well dressed and asked to do nothing but wait, and we admit that across its 143 minutes we waited too, fond of her and unable to say what Susan wanted beyond a break, because the script had not thought to ask. Later listeners have found the voice shrill, and the acting has been called stylised; both charges stick more often than we would like.
Kiss Me Kate is the exception and the argument for what she might have been. Lilli Vanessi is a more assertive part, with a Cole Porter score and room for comedy and argument, and Grayson, given something to do besides be adored, does it. It is the film to start with. Show Boat is next, for the voice at full stretch. Save Anchors Aweigh for Kelly, and for the window, which she fills exactly as required.
Biography
Kathryn Grayson was an American actress and operatic soprano singer. Born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick on 9 February 1922 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, she trained as an opera singer from the age of twelve. She was signed to an MGM contract in the early 1940s without a screen test.
She established her career in musical films, progressing from supporting roles to leads. Her notable performances include Thousands Cheer (1943), Anchors Aweigh (1945) as Susan Abbott, Show Boat (1951) as Magnolia Hawks and Kiss Me Kate (1953) as Lilli Vanessi, often opposite Howard Keel. She also appeared in Ziegfeld Follies (1946).
As film musicals declined, Grayson worked in theatre, including Camelot (1962–1964), and performed in operas such as La bohème, Madama Butterfly, Orpheus in the Underworld and La traviata. She died on 17 February 2010.
