Natalie Hall

b. 23 September 1904, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, d. 4 March 1994, Edgecomb, Maine, USA. Hall made her first appearance on Broadway in Three Little Girls (1930), which had music and lyrics mostly by Walter Kollo and Harry B. Smith. Among the songs sung by Hall were a trio with Margaret Adams and Charles Hedley, ‘Love’s Happy Dream’, a duet with Adams, ‘Dream On (Little Sister)’, music by Maurice Rubens, two duets with Hedley, ‘The Letter Song’ and ‘Love’s Happy Dream’, and another duet with Adams, ‘Love Comes Once In A Lifetime’, music by Harold Stern, lyrics by Stella Unger. Hall was then in Music In The Air (1932), music by Jerome Kern, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, which ran for 342 performances at the Alvin and 44th Street Theatres. Among the show’s most popular songs were ‘I’ve Told Ev’ry Little Star’ and ‘The Song Is You’. In December 1934 Hall opened in Rudolf Friml’s Music Hath Charms, which ran for only 29 performances. In January 1937, she was in William Shakespeare’s Othello, starring Walter Huston as Othello, Brian Aherne as Iago and Nan Sunderland as Desdemona. In 1938 Hall appeared in Knights Of Song, staged between 17-29 October, which presented a selection of songs by Arthur Sullivan and W.S. Gilbert including ‘The Moon And I’ and ‘The Flowers That Bloom In The Spring’, ‘Ring The Merry Bells’, ‘Merry Young Heart’, and ‘None Shall Part Us’.


Hall also visited London, England in the mid-30s, appearing on radio in a version of The Lilac Domino that was transmitted on 4 April 1934. With music by Charles Cuvillièr, libretto by Harry B. Smith and Robert B. Smith, the show also starred Harry Welchman, Webster Booth, Alfred Wellesley, Abraham Sofaer, Barbara Couper, with the BBC Theatre Orchestra conducted by Stanford Robinson. On 22 May 1934, Puritan Lullaby was broadcast. With music by Kenneth Leslie-Smith, book and lyrics by James Dyrenforth, the show also featured Booth, George Baker, Renée de Vaux, Vivienne Chatterton and Peter Penrose. This show was re-transmitted on 24 September 1935 and 5 October 1935. Hall also appeared in a film, Tropical Trouble (1936), and made a handful of recordings, including ‘Wonderful Eyes’.


(NB: A young singer named Natalie Hall appeared as Louisa von Trapp in the 1998 Broadway revival of The Sound Of Music. In the UK, a similarly named singer was a successful contestant on television’s Popstars in 2005 when she was aged 15.)