Years active 1934-1951 Role Opera Singer | Name Kathleen Howard | |
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Occupation Opera singer, actress, magazine editor Died April 15, 1956, Hollywood, California, United States Movies It's a Gift, Man on the Flying Trapeze, Death Takes a Holiday, Centennial Summer, The Bride Goes Wild Similar People Norman Z McLeod, W C Fields, Clyde Bruckman, Otto Preminger, Mitchell Leisen | ||
Kathleen Howard (July 27, 1884 - April 15, 1956) was a Canadian-born American opera singer magazine editor and character actress from the mid-1930s through the 1940s. She spent her childhood in Buffalo, New York and is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery there.
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Biography
She created the role of Zita in Giacomo Puccini's Gianni Schicchi at the Metropolitan Opera in 1918. She was also memorable as Amelia, the nagging, shrewish wife of W.C. Fields in It's a Gift (1934). She appeared in two other films of W.C. Fields: You're Telling Me! (1934) and Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935).
Howard was part of the repertory system in the opera houses of Metz and Darmstadt previous to World War I. She told of her life as an opera singer in an autobiography, Confessions of an Opera Singer (Knopf 1918).
Death
Howard died on April 15, 1956, aged 71, of undisclosed causes, in Hollywood, California.
Legacy
Howard appears to have not made as many opera recordings for companies of the acoustical era such as did her contemporaries Geraldine Farrar and Mary Garden; her few recordings were vertical-cut discs made for the American branch of Pathe Freres in 1918 which received limited distribution. Among them are Harry Burleigh's arrangement of the spiritual "Deep River," arias from Charles Gounod's Faust and Giuseppe Verdi's Il Trovatore (in English), and the "Barcarolle" from Jacques Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann with Claudia Muzio (in French).