Rough Transcript

Season 1: Episode 8

Mama Was a Star

Hosts: Gillian Frank & Lauren Gutterman

Guests and Additional Audio: Ruth Wallis, Alan Pastman, Rusty Warren, Mitch Douglas, Bobby Limb, and Placeholder(24:29)

Ruth Wallis:

Children will be children,

they’re such dear little girls and boys.

Haven’t got a worry in the world,

except about their toys.

Little Susie Mae, who lives across the way,

came to visit us and this is what she had to say:

Johnny’s got a yo yo,

he got it from his dad.

He always lets me play with it,

It’s the best toy I ever had.

He never lends it out to any other kids in town,

Cause I’m the only one who knows how to get it up and down.

Lauren Gutterman: That was Ruth Wallis singing her 1947 hit, “Johnny Had a Yo Yo.” Ruth Wallis was one of the greatest singers, comedians, and performers of sexually suggestive lyrics in the postwar United States

Chances are you’ve never heard of her. Most of her catalogue remains on vinyl.  And historians have forgotten her.

But from the 1940s until the early 1970s, Ruth Wallis was a mainstay at supper clubs and hotels. She sang her party songs on small and large stages around the world. Her risqué records, which had titles like “Old Party Favorites,” and “House Party” were banned in Boston and confiscated in Australia. Although most of her songs were too edgy for radio play, three of her singles sold over a million copies each. Devoted audiences and music critics alike celebrated Ruth Wallis as a “saucy sophisticate” and applauded her witty word play.

Gillian Frank: For those interested in the sexual past, Ruth Wallis’ records and her career are treasures. Not only was her music smart and funny, but she managed to produce sexually charged records when anti-obscenity laws were in full force. At a time when it was legally risky for entertainers to sing for profit and pleasure about sexuality, Ruth used innuendo to playfully hint at a variety of straight and queer sexual pleasures.

The cast of characters in her many songs include horny husbands who want “pizza” every night, a girlfriend who demands that her boyfriend “give it to her in the backseat,” it being an engagement ring of course, an oilman from Texas who liked to drill all day long, and a discontented mama who buys a “do it yourself kit” because “papa can’t do it no more.”

Ruth Wallis:

Momma’s got a get herself a do it yourself kit,

‘Cause papa can’t do it no more.

Momma’s got a get herself a do it yourself kit,

Papa can’t get to it no more.

Got a couple of odds and an end that needs handling,

This chick going to lay and those eggs need candling,

Won’t someone play on my little old mandolin,

Papa can’t do it no more.

Gillian Frank: Ruth Wallace’s songs teased about same-sex desires, too, at a moment when homosexuality was severely stigmatized and being openly gay or lesbian carried enormous social risks. But in Wallis’s songs we meet men whom she campily calls “queer things.” And she expresses a live-and-let-live attitude to boys who like to act and dress like girls and to the not-so-closeted gay men married to women.

Ruth Wallis (Queer Things):

We got married in the spring,

To prove it here’s my wedding ring.

I always think of my blushing groom,

Whenever I see the pansies bloom. (Oh no!)

Say cannot be,

Queer things are happening to me.

He’s never been to gay Paris,

But he is gay as he can be.

His friends are sweet,

They’re the queerest band.

They turned my home into a fairy land.

We have decided it cannot be.

I’m not for him and he’s not for me.

He can do what he wants, and I’ll do what I can,

But the both of us, have got to get a man!

Gillian Frank: Although the 1950s are typically remembered as an era of sexual repression, heated cultural battles over sexual values played out in bedrooms, in the courts and also in popular culture. Ruth Wallis’ music represented an increasingly important current in American culture at this moment; one that insisted that sexual fulfillment was essential to personal happiness. Whether her songs’ characters were male or female, gay or straight, Ruth Wallis’ songs celebrated the pursuit of sexual pleasure.

Ruth Wallis’ songs focused on different kinds of pleasures and bodies. She found humor in sexual potential and sexual failings: impotent men and men with gigantic…. fishing poles, flat-chested women and women with "ice cream cone figures – two scoops if you please."

Lauren Gutterman: Ruth Wallis’s story turns out to be even more complex than the story of a provocative performer who skirted censorship through her mastery of innuendo and saucy wordplay. The very thing that made Ruth famous—her sexual wordplay—was the greatest obstacle to the art she wanted to create, and to the professional legitimacy she tried to attain. We see in her career the story of a woman struggling to be taken seriously as a performer at a moment when women were expected to be housewives and to hold little ambition beyond motherhood.

Once the restrictive obscenity laws that supercharged her career gave way to a more permissive culture in the United States, Ruth Wallis’s relevance and popularity declined. As fewer American audiences were shocked by Ruth’s borderline performances, she took her show on the road, to Australia, where stricter obscenity laws made her wordplay delightfully subversive.

Ruth Wallis’s story is also one of ambitious and funny Jewish women in midcentury America who felt empowered to pursue creative and public careers. Ruth was part of a tradition of Jewish comics whose use of satire and mockery defined their humor. As historian Joyce Antler has phrased it, the immigrant experience of Jewish comedians “living between two worlds has given them a sharp critical edge and the ability to express the anxieties and foibles of contemporary culture.”

But even more than this, we see in her career a story about the costs of sexual performance for women, which both empowered and limited Ruth’s scope of expression. Even though Ruth attempted to “go straight” throughout her lifetime, audiences insisted that she remain the saucy chanteuse and stick with witty songs about sex and sexuality. Audiences roared for her songs about Davy’s Dinghy but were tepid about her love ballads.

I’m Lauren Gutterman.

Gillian Frank: I’m Gillian Frank. And I’m Gillian Frank. Welcome to the season finale of Sexing History.  In this episode we spotlight Ruth Wallis’ music and career. You’ll hear some of her old party favorites, some deep cuts, and also some never before released songs.

Gillian Frank: Ruth Wallis was born as Ruth Wohl in 1920 in New York City to Jewish immigrant parents from Austria. While still in high school, she began auditioning her songs for publishers. Although publishers rejected these songs, which were mostly sentimental ballads, they were impressed with Ruth’s singing and encouraged her to continue performing.

Ruth Wohl adapted a stage name, Ruth Wallis, which she took from Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee who created an international scandal when she married the King of England.

While still in high school, Ruth landed a spot singing for WHN, A New York City radio station. After she completed high school, she toured around the United States with a number of orchestras.

Ruth briefly sang for the King of Swing, Benny Goodman and for bandleader Isham Jones. She also worked the cocktail and hotel lounge circuit, where she played piano and sang.

Lauren Gutterman: While performing in a club called the Latin Quarter in Boston in 1942, Ruth met and began to date its manager, Hy Pastman. The two continued to correspond when Hy was deployed overseas during WWII. They married in 1945 after returned home.

In an October 1945 letter, the still enlisted Hy told a friend about their courtship and marriage.

Gillian Frank: “...I married a Jewish girl from N.Y. that I have known for three years. She’s a beautiful red-head and we are crazy about each other. My wife’s name is Ruth and she is in show business, she plays the piano and sings also writes her own material. She’s quite a girl…”

Lauren Gutterman: Hy soon became Ruth’s manager. Together they had two children, Alan and Ronnie. You’ll be hearing from Alan Pastman throughout this episode.

Around 1947 a record executive told Ruth about a bestselling novelty song filled with double entendres, “The Freckles Song.”

Freckle Song Audio:

She's got freckles on her but.......she's nice

And when she's in my arms it's paradise

Oh she smells just like a rose

From her head down to her toes

She's got freckles on her but.......she's nice

Lauren Gutterman: The record executive suggested that Ruth try her hand at novelty songs. Ruth started to write and perform humorous songs filled with innuendos. She quickly became known as “the saucy sophisticate,” for songs as “An Oilman from Texas,” and the “Dinghy Song.”

Ruth Wallis (The Dinghy Song):

Sailing, sailing, over the ocean blue
Davy's got a dinghy, so he paddles his own canoe

He's got the cutest little dinghy in the navy
And all the girlies know that it's so.
The cutest little dinghy in the navy,
They love to watch him go "Heave ho!"
Just for a lark, he went and painted it green.
It's the only green dinghy that the girls have ever seen,
The cutest little dinghy in the navy. Heave ho! Heave ho!

Gillian Frank: In 1947, Ruth released her first EP, which featured “Johnny Had a Yo Yo” and “Your Daddy Was A Soldier.” The record topped the jukebox bestseller list. A year later, she released her first LP, “Old Party Favorites,” which sold close to a million copies.

One of the earliest reviews of Ruth’s performance in Billboard magazine described her as having the “peculiar talent of being able to hold a humorous mirror to the seamy side of life and, when expressed in her sophisticated style, the weaknesses of human nature assume a humorous aspect.”

Lauren Gutterman: Ruth Wallis’s career bloomed as nightclubs took over the entertainment life of the United States. In the 1940s, most American cities had several nightclubs, often called "supper clubs." The larger clubs, such as the famed Copacabana in New York City, hosted big bands, showgirls, and live orchestras.

For patrons, supper clubs provided an evening of dinner, dancing, and a night away from home. Performers could offer more risqué entertainment than Americans heard over their radios or saw on their television sets.

Performers would typically hold down a residency at a club for weeks on end, before moving to another city and another nightclub. Smaller supper clubs offered performers venues where they could showcase their material, with the hopes of getting a hit and moving on to bigger stages in Los Angeles or New York City.

Ruth Wallis (Mama Was a Star):

Mama was a star

Yeah, yeah, yeah, mama was a star

And everywhere that she appeared

The people stood and cheered

Cause mama was a star.

And in her dressing room

Miles of flowers and gallons of perfume.

And she ate steak and caviar

And drove a firing car.

Cause Mama was a star.

And when you are a star,

The world takes on a rosy glow.

Anywhere dawn glasses,

Everywhere you go.

Mama was a glance,

And they all said that she had class.

But it was not the clothes she wore

That made the world adore her.

They came from near and far.

Because mama she had something,

That made others look like nothing,

That’s why mama was a star.

Gillian Frank: That was a clip of the title song of Ruth Wallis’ unreleased musical “Mama Was a Star.” Ruth Wallis toured both large and small clubs alternating between shorter and longer residencies. Hy described Ruth’s touring circuit in a 1949 letter:

“Ruth worked in Cincinnati 3 weeks then to Kansas City for 2 weeks, then Omaha for 6 weeks, then Dallas, Texas for 5 weeks, San Diego 2 weeks and now here in Los Angeles for at least 8 weeks, so you see we did some traveling and Ruth has only had about 12 days off in all this time.”

While touring across the country, Ruth drew an economically diverse audience that ranged from suburban middle-class couples to rural farmers.  Her own promotional material emphasized that “her admirers include people in all walks of life” from college professors to longshoremen. 

Lauren Gutterman: Ruth Wallis was part of a long tradition of brash and bawdy Jewish female comedians who pushed the edges of the male dominated comedy industry and infused it with a distinctly Jewish and female perspective. Her own cohort included Patsy Abbot, Belle Barth, Rusty Warren and Pearl Williams. These working-class Jewish comedians all released bestselling “party records” that combined music and comedy.  

To some degree, ethnic stereotypes about outspoken Jewish women created space for their careers. So too did a Jewish cultural pattern that empowered women to strive for professional success. Ruth and her contemporaries challenged conventional understandings of "appropriate" behavior for all women. With their blatantly sexual humor, they approached topics that were typically reserved for men and for private spaces. Masturbation, intercourse, prostitution, genitalia and homosexuality: few topics were off-limits.

Jewishness, in addition to sexuality, informed the comedy routines of Ruth and her female contemporaries. They joked about Jewish identity, food, and culture and used Yiddish words.

Ruth Wallis (Marriage Jewish Style):

Mama always said marry a nice Jewish boy

Being a nice Jewish girl, I obeyed.

So now for all them nice Jewish boys

I’d like to sing a nice Jewish serenade.

You take yourself a lovely little Jewish bride

So your mama and your papa will be satisfied.

And you keep a little shiksha on the side

That’s marriage Jewish style.

You buy your wife a lovely little yellow Cadillac

Get her a steady maid so she can just relax.

While you keep the shiksha busy on her back

That’s marriage Jewish style.

You go down to Miami

Every winter for a spree.

You go down there in March

You send your wife in January.

Gillian Frank: Many of these female Jewish comedians lived and performed in Miami, a city that became a Jewish metropolis in the postwar period and which also became known as the "Southern Borscht Belt."

Ruth Wallis (The American Plan):

So I went to Miami to have two weeks fun

To lay on the sand with some body sun.

I didn’t know that when I decided to go

That the American plan does not include a man.

Alan Pastman: My name is Alan Pastman, I am the son of Ruth Wallis and by the time I was three we had settled in the area of Miami Beach. Growing up in Miami beach, I would often describe our family as being showbiz Jews. We were, my sister and I, Ronnie and I were brought up as reformed Jews. Not Terribly religious, but we certainly did all the things that we were supposed to do back then. My parents weren’t that particularly religious, they supported our local temple, so in that setting my mom performed in the local hotels for many many years. There were numerous hotels down in Miami, she performed probably in six or eight venues.

Gillian Frank: Although Ruth belonged to this cohort of Miami based Jewish performers, she disliked her peers. In an interview with the journalist Chuck Miller, Ruth remembered that “she had to watch as her best novelty songs were covered by artists like Rusty Warren and Belle Barth.”

Alan Pastman: There were times that she had to prevent them from singing her songs, some of them would be performing her songs and she would hear about it and we’d have to take action. At the time I was probably nine, I know that my father and my mom had to pursue both Belle Barth and Rusty Warren.

Gillian Frank: Here’s the fabulous Rusty Warren talking about covering Ruth Wallis’s songs.

Rusty Warren: Ruth Wallis was the beginning. She was the first to get around the night clubs and go and play her “Daily’s Little Dinghy” and all the little cute stuff she did. I think I came pretty much behind her, I remember I had some of her albums that I copied from and that’s why her husband said “You know you can tell someone that this Ruth Wallis did this song”, you know how life is. As far as I’m concerned, I found some of her albums and I copied some of her songs until I started getting my own numbers.

Alan Pastman: My mom would be at the table speaking with my dad and I’d hear the word tramp, and my mom would look back to me and start singing “Tramp, tramp, tramp like the soldiers go”, as though I didn’t know what she was talking about. But she didn’t care for the type of material that they did, of course I’m sure she didn’t like being overshadowed by people that were basically singing songs much, much more crude, much simpler, not as well written. But you know, that was just a sign of the times.

Ruth Wallis:

The bumps were bumpier

The grinds were grindier

The girls were bustier

And more behindier.

That was the burlesque that was.

The grinds were grindier

The bumps were bumpier

The broads were broadier

A little bit lumpier.

That was the burlesque that was.

There was an art

To taking it off

And many were the brides to be

Who came to learn the honeymoon specialty.

The pasties were pastier

The G-strings stringier

The popcorn tastier

The tassels swingier

That was the burlesque that was.

Lauren Gutterman: Many fans first heard Ruth Wallis’ music through her party records. In the 1940s and 1950s there was “a thriving market for under-the-counter risqué recordings.” These risqué albums offered audiences “an opportunity to enjoy the exciting, uncensored atmosphere of the nightclub” from their own living rooms. Often, these records were played at parties as ice-breakers.

Party albums enabled comedians like Ruth Wallis to reach audiences who could not necessarily attend their live acts. They also offered listeners the pleasure of hearing someone talk about sex.

Ruth’s promotional material played up the idea that her music was supposed to be experienced in a group. Artwork for her album covers featured party goers drinking and celebrating and laughing together.

Ruth Wallis’ records argued that sexual humor was a mainstay of American conversation. The jacket for her album “The Spice is Right” declared as much when it said: “There was Kinsey. There was Freud. There was Havelock Ellis. Now comes the definitive report, the behind-the shade- report, by Ruth Wallis. It’s strange and funny and Ruth sets it all to music.”

Gillian Frank: Ruth joined a chorus of American voices when she sang about how sex was key to a happy marriage. And she was hardly a soloist when she sang about the sexual pleasures that might be found before and outside of the marriage bed.

This increasingly vocal emphasis on sexual pleasure worried some self-appointed guardians of morality. Government officials and purity crusaders feared that party records--what they called dirty discs--would seduce children and adults into committing immoral and dangerous sexual acts. A sexual song, they believed, could lead to sex crime and deviance.

The postwar period saw a growth in anti-obscenity campaigns. Law enforcement, the press, and decency leagues campaigned at the local level against a growing market in obscene and suggestive records. And district attorneys actively investigated and raided record shops for “indecent phonograph recordings.”

At the beginning of her career, censors considered Ruth’s records to be "borderline material." Her albums contained erotic imagery that walked the line between respectable discussions of sex and illicit pornography.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, record distributors and owners faced local and federal prosecution for shipping “pornographic recordings.” As a result, larger record companies avoided performers like Ruth Wallis. Few radio stations would play Ruth’s records on air out of fear of losing their licenses. Smaller record labels were more willing to take risks. And one such company released Ruth’s first record.

Ruth Wallis:

Her daddy was a soldier

And you mommy was a wag.

They crossed the sea together

And together they came back.

Your daddy was so handsome

And he looked show sharp in brown

And all the fellows whistled

When your mommy went to town.

Lauren Gutterman: Because Ruth faced so much difficulty getting major record labels to publish her songs, in 1949, she and Hy founded Wallis Original Records. Having their own label gave Ruth and Hy creative and financial control and ownership of her compositions.

Alan Pastman: My mom and dad, along with a fellow named Joe Liebowitz formed the Wallace original record corporation. This is probably talking about sometime late in the 40s, my dad looked at the situation and realized that it was hard to get labels to carry my mom’s stuff. He decided that the way to do it was to form their own record label and that worked just fine.

Lauren Gutterman: Ruth and Hy still worried about law enforcement. In a letter written in October 1950, Ruth and Hy’s business partner, Joe Liebowitz, recalled first-hand the chilling effect of these postwar anti-obscenity campaigns:

Placeholder (24:29): Our records have never been considered filthy or obscene and have never been molested by the authorities, except in Boston, where children are apparently born only through divine means. About a year or so ago, several really dirty records enjoyed a great vogue. They used dirty and obscene language, the facts of life and even the daily functions of the human body were spoken of in crude terms.

While they sold in fairly large quantities, these records created a huge wave of resentment throughout the nation. It even reached congress where a bill was passed making it a criminal offence to send obscene records through the mails. Spurred by this action, local politicians in many parts of the country became self-righteous censors and organized so called “purity drives”. The really dirty records were of course, immediately taken off the market. That did not stop the politicians. Drives were run in Chicago, Kansas City, Saint Louis, Hartford, Newark, and many other cities.

Local gentleman who were probably making a fast buck from bordellos and gambling joints, sought long and hard to find something to ban. These drives are now beginning to ebb, but it will probably be at least six or eight months until the drives and repercussions have disappeared.

Lauren Gutterman: Joel Liebowitz wrote this letter at the very moment that federal law enforcement and politicians trained their sites on dirty discs.

In 1950, amid local law enforcement crackdowns on “party records,” the Supreme Court ruled in US v. Alpers, that it was illegal to ship obscene phonograph records across state lines and that records could be prosecuted as obscene.

Gillian Frank: These obscenity laws affected how audiences bought Ruth’s records and shaped how they listened to her music. Ruth’s fans understood that she risked prosecution for her songs. This knowledge added a layer of excitement to the ingenious wordplay that formed the heart of Ruth’s repertoire.

Ruth Wallis:

Matilda Jones was going steady

But think I was never ready.

He just couldn’t satisfy her curiosity.

He talked real big about what he’d do

Until finally she said “listen you”

“If you got what you say you’ve got

You’ll hit the spot with me”

Give me what you promised me daddy

Do you right by your baby tonight

You know you promised to give me that thrill

And if you don’t come up with it I’ll find somebody else who will.

So give me what you promised me daddy

Do right by your baby tonight.

You told me that I’d get it last Sunday

In the back seat of the car.

And if you do what you promised

Then I’ll really know how good a man you are.

Give me what you promised me daddy (c’mon spray)

Give me, give me, give me, my engagement ring.

Gillian Frank: In response to strict obscenity laws, Ruth Wallis found ingenious ways to speak about sex. She used double meanings that allowed her to stay within the letter of the law while violating its spirit.  The pleasure Ruth offered to listeners wasn’t just sexual imagery… it was the pleasure of decoding the meanings of her lyrics and knowing that a fishing pole wasn’t just a fishing pole and an engagement ring wasn’t just an engagement ring.

Lauren Gutterman: Even as she pushed the boundaries of respectability, Ruth publicly insisted that there was nothing “dirty” about her music. Part of what enabled Ruth to insist that she was a respectable woman, and that it was ok to talk about sex, was her newfound status as a mother.

In May of 1950, as campaigns against dirty records raged, her husband wrote a letter to his friend announcing exciting news.

“….you will understand why I couldn’t leave Ruth alone in Detroit. She is now in her 3rd month and if all goes well we expect to have an heir early in December. As things stand now we expect to retire and go back to Boston and have the baby there…”

Gillian Frank: In September of 1950, at Ruth entered her last trimester, she and Hy returned to Boston to stay with Hy’s mother. The two awaited the December 7th due date of their firstborn even as they made plans to perform in New Orleans six weeks after the expected the birth. Financial insecurity motivated them. Hy explained in a letter, “If we were sure the record business would continue she could retire and I could find something to do -- looks like we will have to cross our bridges as we come to them.”

Ruth and Hy’s first child, Ronnie Pastman was born on December 18, 1950. Hy and Ruth’s parents helped care for her while the two of them quickly returned to the road. Around August of 1952, Ruth became pregnant with her second child. Hy confided in a friend, “We didn’t plan for it,” “but now that it’s on the way we are rather excited and happy about it.” Alan Past was born on March 28, 1953.

Even though she now had two children, the road called to Ruth. Hy explained to a friend “My record business is going along fine and we can live real well on that income alone, however Ruth intends to go back to work next September.”

As Ruth’s career grew, so too did the time she spent away from her kids.

Alan Pastman: She spent a lot of time working actually, I can remember that when we lived in Miami she may be playing at one of the hotels at night and then  at noontime the next day her arranger would be over they’d be sitting at the paino going over songs that she’d written. Writing down the arrangement for the song, the music, fine tuning it. By six o’clock that evening she’d even be getting ready to go and perform. She’d have a show at nine and a show at one AM in the morning. You know, she’d come home and she’d just go back through all that again. I really don’t ever recall her vacationing, to tell you the truth. You know, a lot of the challenges were just the fact that when she was a way from home, this really became a problem with her success. Unfortunately, my dad was around more than my mom was and my sister noticed the absence of my mother more than I did.

Gillian Frank: Because images of homebound mothers dominated popular culture in the 1950s, Ruth needed to maintain her maternal image. The back of her 1953 album “Saucy Hit Parade” defensively noted, “Although her records are sold in foreign countries, she has never left Continental U.S. spending half her time touring and the other half with her husband and two youngsters at home.”

Lauren Gutterman: Even as they toured, Ruth and Hy kept trying to compose their next “hit” record that would keep Ruth in the limelight and keep the money coming in. In one letter the couple wrote, “we are going to release our next record and go through the same routine with it until we get a hit or run out of money!” The refrain running through Ruth and Hy’s letters from those years was their hope for a hit and the loneliness of being on the road for long stretches of time.

Ruth Wallis:

You can laugh at the world

So here I stand fixed

With my courage unfurled.

Long as I got my sense of humor

Nothing can get me down.

Long as I got my sense of humor

I’m queen of this old town.

Even when the critics say I’m falling on my face

I just chuckle and I knuckle down

And put my jigsaw puzzle world in place.

Long as I laugh when things upset me

Nobody knows I’m blue

I am my own best friend

And my best friend always sees me through

Things will straighten out

I say I need a little time

Even when life is full de-bloom

Long as I got my sense of humor

I know that the last laugh will be mine.

Gillian Frank: Part of what limited Ruth’s mainstream success was that she was trapped by her image as a sexy singer.

Alan Pastman: My mom was a basically an entertainer, a cabaret singer. She wrote all the words and music - and performed them - to over two hundred songs that she composed. She wrote songs that ranged anywhere from calypso to jazz to show type songs. Unfortunately, she was typecast as a risqué chanteuse and although she had quite a voice despite being multidimensional she really got stuck being known as a risqué comedian. But as my father said, it’s the risqué songs pay all the bills.

Gillian Frank: In 1949 Ruth told Variety magazine that she wanted to "come clean," that she felt badly about the influence her music could have on young people, and that she disliked the sexual attention her music brought her on the road. In this interview, Ruth may well have been bowing to social expectations by denying that she enjoyed singing erotically charged songs, and implying that she was really a "good girl" at heart. But her struggle to branch out to other musical genres suggest that she truly did hope for success beyond the "party albums" that confined her to the sidelines of the music industry.

In 1960, a reviewer for the Washington Post noted that Ruth was trying to branch out in her recent night club performances, without much success

Lauren Gutterman: Audiences never responded to Ruth's dramatic love ballads the way they did her racy, humorous tunes. She might well be a married mother of two, a talented lyricist with a beautiful voice, a performer capable of conveying a range of feelings and stories. It didn't matter. She was the "saucy sophisticate" in her listeners’ minds, and they were not eager to see her change.

Gillian Frank: During the 1960s, as obscenity law enforcement loosened in the United States and performers offered even riskier fare, Ruth’s sexual performance became less of a draw. The sexual revolution had made performances blunter and crasser.

Ruth’s act, which was never ruled obscene, depended upon silences around sexuality even as her actual performance undermined these silences. She played with the things not said and made them sayable. But as the courts liberalized obscenity, Ruth’s performances made less sense and had less appeal when the very things she hinted at were openly displayed. What was the fun in hinting at genitals in song when you could see full frontal nudity in a Broadway musical?

But as Ruth’s career waned in the United States, she found increasing success abroad specifically Australia where obscenity laws continued to be enforced.

Lauren Gutterman: In 1961, Ruth traveled to Australia for a two-week appearance at a nightclub in Sydney. It was her first tour there and she and Hy brought along their two kids, for what they hoped would be a family vacation. Australian authorities, however, were already primed to censor Ruth. In the mid-1950s, newspapers had printed a slew of articles declaring Ruth Wallis’s music to be obscene.

Ruth Wallis: I have ten risqué albums. Somehow the albums, we distributed them all over the world, somebody from Australia said it would be a good idea to bring Ruth Wallis down here. When I went down there, the records were banned in Australia. But they said, “we got a good idea, you come off the plane with two of your albums under your arm.” And sure enough the police were waiting for me. I was arrested, of course they laughed, but I was arrested. And then of course they said well, not to worry, and then I opened at Checkers which was a very big club there. And I did very well and I went back many times. I was there sixteen weeks the first times and then the records went to Tasmania and I had to appear to Tasmania, and New Zealand and South Africa.

Lauren Gutterman: As soon as Ruth stepped off the plane in Sydney, customs agents confiscated copies of her latest album "Hot Songs for Cool Knights." They refused to let the albums into the country, and they questioned Ruth about her work for an hour. Ruth denied that there was anything obscene about her music. She offered to sing her songs before a magistrate and the Australian Senate to prove they were not bawdy and made national news.

Ruth Wallis:

I flew into mascot field one day

The customs took my records away.

But I heard Athol Guy say

in your jolly way.

(Oh not to worry. Oh not to sigh.

You didn’t pack your records by and by)

Lauren Gutterman: Ultimately, Ruth's songs were banned from Australian radio, but her run-in with authorities only increased her popularity. Ruth was all too happy to flaunt her notoriety onstage. She even appeared on a popular Australian talk show in 1964 where she and the host played up her transgressive image.

Bobby Limb: You know we’re very lucky to have Ruth in the show. In fact she almost didn’t get into the country. Well I’m suppose you all read about the trouble she had with the Australian customs department. Of couse she got through the customs eventually.

Gillian Frank With sold-out shows and extended residencies Down Under, Ruth spent months at a time there. This time away from home took a toll on her children and her marriage.

Alan Pastman: They would call us from Australia, my mom and my dad would be over there and we’d be, there’d always be one set of our grandparents in the house. They would call us after four weeks to tell us that well, they would be staying one more week, the owners of the club have asked her to stay over. And this would go on for weeks. So there was one year they spent ten weeks performing at Checkers. When my father came home he paid off our house in cash. So, you know, this was really big time for them. She followed one year, she would follow, people into Checkers Sinatra sang there, Sammy Davis was there, Liza Minnelli was there.

Although my mother had some success in the us. The success that she had in Australia was unbelievable, because for a risqué comedian singer to be singing on the same stage with the likes of Sinatra would just show you the height which she’d been able to achieve. You know, this continued every year for five years. During those days, my mom wasn’t around a lot, I think that’s when I really began to realize the type of industry that she was in.

Gillian Frank: As her career in the United States and Australia declined, Ruth Wallis retired from performing. She gave her final major concert in Australia in 1969.

Alan Pastman: My mom stopped performing in Australia, basically times had changed, and her lyrics and her music were no longer that shocking anymore. There were other performers that got involved in the business and they weren’t concerned with being clever. They were just concerned with shock value, and basically their entertainment consisted of four-letter words. And that wasn’t anything that my mom could do. And she still had a career here in the US, but it was a step backward, it was as step down and my mom didn’t do down well. And I think that between the loss of stature in her career and whatever else may have been going on at the time. I was eleven years old, they split up then. My mom she never remarried, my father remained single and they reconciled and started living together two years before my father passed away. That was in 1987.

Gillian Frank: After her retirement from the stage, Ruth continued to write and try to get her musicals published.

Alan Pastman: Well she started writing straight music. She’s written music and lyrics to three and half Broadway style shows and they’ve been collecting dust for many years.

Gillian Frank: These musicals included the semi-autobiographical “Mama Was a Star” and “Prinny” a period piece about the life of Prince George of England. She spent her final years living with her son Alan.

Lauren Gutterman: A few years before Ruth died she had one last moment in the spotlight. In 2003, Ruth contacted Mitch Douglas, a literary agent about producing her plays. Here’s Douglas telling the story.

Mitch Douglas: Well it’s very funny. It’s sort of an indirect story but I got to know Ruth Wallis when I was about fourteen years old. I had a sister who was a single mother and she got remarried to an absolute jerk when I was a teenager. The guy had absolutely nothing going for him, except his job. His job was to go around and go to all the old 78 jukeboxes and remove the 78 jukeboxes and replace them with 45 record jukeboxes. So he had this store where he had a back room with all these old 78 records that he had taken off the jukeboxes. So I spent my weekends when I was in high school going to that room and all these wonderful records. That’s where I got my musical education.

And one day I picked up a record saying “The Dinghy Song by Ruth Wallis.” And I took it home and played it and I thought “I think this is a dirty song” and then I wore it out. So I became a Ruth Wallis fan. I bought every single Ruth Wallis album I could find. So I really knew her material.

Now flash forward. I’m at ICM working as an agent with some pretty nifty clients and I’ve got a new assistant and I say never screen my calls, I take everybody who calls me. But I heard him talking to someone on the second phone and I hung up and then I picked up that phone and said “Hello excuse me but I was on the other phone this is Mitch Douglas.” And of course my secretary was screening her and I had just heard her say “and I had written a show called ‘And Mama Was a Star’.” And I said, “Listen, if you’re going to write musicals, they either have to be based on something famous, or you have to be famous.” And she said, “Well people used to know who I am.” And I said, “I’m sorry, I picked up in the middle of the conversation and I didn’t hear your name.” And she said, “My name is Ruth Wallis.” And I said, “Ruth Wallis!” and I sang her The Dinghy Song from start to finish. And she said, “I love you.” And I said I can do the “ ‘You Buy Me Song’, I  buy me you if you buy me me, and I can do Johnny’s got the same little yoyo that he had when he was a kid. And I said, “You get into this office, I want to meet you.”

And she came in, and she was this sort of mousy looking little woman, but beautiful. Honey blond, beige business suit, very very pretty and an absolutely knockout figure. And she was so touched, she said, “You were the only person who knew who I was and you were the only person who would take my phone call.” And so we started talking about the show she had written. And a lot of shows, you know they really have no commercial application. And I said, “Ruth, you really need to do a review of your song.” And she said, “Well I used to do Vegas, and I know how to do that. You get ten boys and you get ten girls and you have seven curtains that open at various-“ and I said “No, no, no, no.” So I picked out a small review that was running off Broadway and I took her to see that.  I said, “This is the way we do it. You do this show with five very talented people, and you do high quality and I had a couple of guys who knew how to write musicals who were looking for a project.” And I said, “Listen to this material, do you think you could do a review around it?” And they said, “Sure.” And that’s how we came up with Boobs: The World According to Ruth Wallis.

Lauren Gutterman: Boobs! The Musical: The World According to Ruth Wallis premiered at a small, off-Broadway theater in New York City in 2003. The show brought together twenty-three of Ruth’s classic songs from “Johnny’s Got a Yo-Yo” to “Queer Things.”  The show made Ruth’s sexual humor even more explicit. It opened with the Bride of Frankenstein and her singing breasts.

Here’s Alan Pastman talking about opening night in New York City.

Alan Pastman: Oh it was wonderful, it was wonderful for her. I was there with her on opening night and it was just wonderful. She was beaming and a lot of old friends showed up that she hadn’t seen for years. You know, you have to keep in mind that at that time I think that she was 83 years old. So, you know, to be able to stand up in the audience and take bows, I could just feel the electricity in the crowd.

The Triad Theatre is the small cabaret style theatre but still it was wonderful. It was wonderful for her and it was probably, that was just the very beginning when the Alzheimer’s began. So it was nice that she was able to enjoy that, you know, before she started to lose some of her capabilities.

Lauren Gutterman: Boobs! offered a different type of pleasure than Ruth’s songs did in the 1950s and 1960s. Audiences could still enjoy her witty word-play, and laugh at her jokes. But her work were no longer risqué. Critics even applauded the musical’s “joyous innocence” and its talented cast.

Mitch Douglas: The critics adored it, and Sean Salmon who was the roughest son-of-a-bitch who ever lived wrote his review and his review and he said, “She is legendary, she’s important, her songs at the time she wrote them were controversial and quite daring. Now they are absolutely charming.” So he said, “And the cast is extraordinarily talented and so you cannot count me among the knockers of Boobs.”  

Gillian Frank: Boobs! the musical nostalgically showcased Ruth’s image as the sexy chanteuse. It’s a small irony that she found fame once again in this way. Despite her decades of trying, Ruth’s more dramatic songs never found the spotlight. After she passed away in 2007 from Alzheimer’s related complications, her New York Times obituary read: “Ruth Wallis, Singer-Writer of Risqué Songs, dies at 87.”

Ruth's obituary, however, does not capture the extent of her legacy. We can hear Ruth's influence on her contemporaries Rusty Warren and Belle Barths and hear echoes of their style in the performances of successive generations of funny Jewish women like Gilda Radner, Sandra Bernhard, Bette Midler, Joan Rivers and Sarah Silverman. Each of these women achieved a degree of mainstream appeal and critical attention that Ruth only dreamed of. But her career likely helped to lay the groundwork for these comedians’ later success.

Here’s Ruth Wallis singing “This is the Only Life I Know” to “Play Us Out”.

Ruth Wallis:

The star sings this

This is the only life I know

The stage, the band, the spotlight glow

Some girls cook, and some girls sew

And some at sixteen have a bow.

But at sixteen I was learning do-re-do

And this is the only life I know.

This is the only life I know

Staccato, legato, pianissimo

At what time do we stop a show?

And which is the net town where we’ll go?

At Christmas I’ll be, At Christmas I’ll be.

In Idaho, cause this is the only life I know.

Gillian Frank: Sexing History is produced by Rebecca Davis, Saniya Lee Ghanoui, Devin McGeehan Muchmore, Lauren Gutterman and me.

Our intern is Jayne Swift.

Special thanks to Alan Pastman, Rusty Warren and Mitch Douglas for sharing their stories with us. Thank you to Jennifer Caplan and Lauren Sklaroff for sharing their historical expertise with us.

Lauren Gutterman: Sexing History is made possible with generous funding from Allen Zwickler of the Phil Zwickler Charitable and Memorial Foundation. Created in honor of the journalist, filmmaker, poet and gay activist Phil Zwickler, the Foundation "seeks to promote human rights, education, health and the arts, specifically with respect to the gay and lesbian community, and generally with regard to those individuals and groups who need assistance to survive and be heard." Visit them at pzfoundation.org

Sexing History is also supported by a 2018 Media Production Grant from the Humanities Media Project in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas, Austin. The Humanities Media Project: Their goal is to tell human stories and invite critical conversations that educate, inspire, and connect communities. They believe that the humanities play a crucial role in maintaining a healthy, democratic society.

Gillian Frank: If you’re enjoying our show, please support us by making a small donation. Your contribution will help us continue to produce well researched and compelling stories. You can make a donation on our website, www.sexinghistory.com

Lauren Gutterman: We’re already hard at work on exciting new episodes for Season 2 of Sexing History. Look out for these episodes in the Fall. In the meantime, keep an eye on our website and social media feeds for articles, teasers and other surprises.

I’m Lauren Gutterman.

Gillian Frank: I’m Gillian Frank. Thank you for listening to the first season of Sexing History.

Ruth Willis:

And all the women call me lucky you

No kids to raise no dishes to do.

But some day the audience will applaud no more

Fickle fame will walk out the door.

The musical stalk, I’ll be left alone

Just wondering where the years have flown.

And whatever happened to that conniving Joe

Who asked me to marry him so long ago?
Well he couldn’t wait forever, so he got married.

C’mon lets go on with the show

Cause this is the only lonely life I know.

[End of Audio]

Transcription by Ian McCabe, University of Delaware