Marie became famous as an actress but she had actually started her career as a singer. Music had always been a big part of her life. She said "I started dancing around to phonograph music when I was four". When she was a child she learned how to play the piano and the ukulele. In 1940 she became a featured singer on Tommy Dorsey's radio show. Marie also worked as a vocalist for the Charlie Barnet and Johnny Long orchestras. Her beautiful voice charmed audiences and she became known for her perfect pitch. Surprisingly she was rarely given the opportunity to sing in her films. She sang a few songs in the musical Hit Parade Of 1951. When the movie offers stopped she decided to put together her own nightclub act. The show was a huge success and she performed to sold-out crowds all around the world. Marie appeared in clubs in Las Vegas, Reno, New York City, Hollywood, Paris, and London. Her act always included what she called "elegant sex". In 1957 Bob Hope asked Marie to join him on a U.S.O. tour. That same year she recorded an album called "The Body Sings". She had always hated that nickname but at this point in her career she decided to embrace it. The album featured Marie singing a collection of standards with Hal Borne and his orchestra. It received good reviews and sold well. Some people thought the photo of 34 year old Marie on the cover was too revealing. When Steve Allen promoted the album on his show the censors had to cover her cleavage. Marie continued to perform in nightclubs throughout the 1950's but unfortunately she would never record another album. Today "The Body Sings" is considered a collectors item and it can be very hard to find. In 2006 it was released on CD in Japan.
Signing her Las Vegas contract
On tour in England
The Body Sings included these tracks -
1. Embraceable You
2. How Deep Is the Ocean?
3. You'll Never Know
4. I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)
5. Bill
6. Paradise
7. These Foolish Things
8. Don't Blame Me
9. It Had to Be You
10. He Took Me by Storm
11. I Don't Know Why
12. Falling in Love With Love
From the album notes -
Somewhere in the course of a remarkable and at times turbulent career, Marie McDonald became widely publicized and known as The Body. The sobriquet was not incorrect, it was only incomplete; descriptive, but not inclusive; and comprehensible (as any fool can see), not comprehensive. She could also have been called The Voice, The Brain, and/or The Heart. When RCA Victor, which somehow escaped being known as The Ear, recently signed Marie McDonald to a contract, it was giving due recognition to a fact which has been temporarily obscured in the shuffle: that she is one of the best popular singers alive. This was not technically a discovery, but a rediscovery, since the excellence of her singing voice had long before been attested to by no less exacting an authority than the late Tommy Dorsey, who heard her sing once and promptly paid her the most sincere and flattering compliment a singer can receive...He hired her on the spot. The spot in question was the Hollywood Palladium. Marie's motion picture career had hit a snag and she was heading back to New York to start all over again. As a matter of fact, she had already bought her train ticket. On what was to have been her last night in Hollywood she had a date with an old friend, a songwriter, who escorted her to the Palladium, a citadel of the "big bands" of that day. While dancing she sang a couple of bars of something the band had playing. Dorsey, who had a legendary acuity of hearing left the stand and came over. When the songwriter started to introduce them Dorsey said: "Skip the formalities and tell her to hit that high G again." She did..."Right on the nose!" Dorsey beamed. After the dance she did one number for Dorsey and she was in. Her ability to hit it right on the nose - that is, address a tone at perfectly true pitch - immediately endeared her not only to Dorsey but also to the whole band. Dorsey himself is supposed to have said once, it is a rare quality possessed by a few pop and no opera singers. Marie considers the time she spent with Dorsey the best training she ever received. Singing is only one phase of Marie McDonald's career, which has included fashion modeling, Broadway, radio, the legitimate theater, motion pictures, and currently the glittering Reno-Las Vegas-Miami swank resort hotel and club circuit. It is a phase which RCA Victor is pleased to feature in this collection of memorable standards given Miss McDonald's very special vocal treatment.
