Movies High School Hero, Freddie Steps Out, Vacation Days | ||
Freddie Stewart, born Morris Joseph Lazar (25 March 1921 - 21 August 2000) was an American actor and singer. His credits included playing the lead in The Teen Agers series of films.
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Career
Lazar was born in New York City. He dropped out of school to work as a stock clerk and also worked summers at a Catskills resort. He renamed himself Freddie Stewart (after actors James Stewart and Freddie Bartholomew) when he joined the Cappa Barra Harmonica Band in 1939. By the next year, he was working as a vocalist with Clyde McCoy's Orchestra for $60 a week. He worked his way up to his own radio show in New York on NBC, the fifteen-minute nightly, Freddie Stewart Sings.
He wrote a song "Do I Know What I'm Doing” for She's for Me (1943), and made an appearance in She's a Sweetheart (1944). He later joined Tommy Dorsey's band as a singer for a year.
In 1945 he signed with Monogram Pictures to make a series of movies.