Recent Obituaries, Classic Films Only

[CBHagman]

40. Mezzo-soprano Rise Stevens, 99.

You'll all remember her from Going My Way (with Bing Crosby) and The Chocolate Soldier (with Nelson Eddy).

[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/rise-stevens-opera-star-of-carmen-who-took-her-talents-to-radio-and-film-dies/2013/03/21/52dd80d0-c5dc-11df-94e1-c5afa35a9e59_story.html[/url]

Ms. Stevens won mass appeal by bringing her classical training to recognizable, beloved songs. Her rendition of Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria” is one of the most memorable moments in “Going My Way.” She was Anna in the production of “The King and I” that inaugurated the Music Theater of Lincoln Center in 1964. And, in the view of a Boston Globe critic, the sultry mezzo sang “Begin the Beguine,” by Cole Porter, “so insinuatingly she could have gotten herself arrested.”

Yet Ms. Stevens never set out to become a pop star. Her Hollywood career came about, she recalled in a 1990 interview with the Washington Times, when she caught the attention of MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer. It did not hurt that Ms. Stevens was about as far from the fat-lady stereotype as an opera singer could be.

After he heard her sing in San Francisco, Ms. Stevens said, Mayer called her in for a screen audition and booked her for “The Chocolate Soldier,” a 1941 film co-starring Nelson Eddy. She enjoyed the project enough to make “Going My Way,” but her life was not in the movies.

“People in the motion picture industry did not think of having a person who would want to go back to opera after having a chance to stay in Hollywood,” Ms. Stevens told the Washington Times. “Mayer told me, ‘What do you mean? I’m offering you this incredible chance at MGM.’ I told him that was my life."