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Frances Newbern Langford (April 4, 1913, Lakeland, Florida – July 11, 2005, Jensen Beach, Florida) was an American singer and entertainer who was popular during the Golden Age of Radio and also made film appearances over two decades.
Langford originally trained as an opera singer. While a young girl she required surgery on her throat, and as a result, she was forced to change her vocal style to a more contemporary big band, popular music style. While singing for radio during the early 1930s, she was heard by Rudy Vallee, who invited her to become a regular on his radio show. She was a well-known radio performer before making her film debut in Every Night at Eight (1935), in which she introduced what would become her signature song: "I'm in the Mood for Love". From 1935 until 1938 she was a regular performer on Dick Powell's radio show.
From then, she began appearing frequently in films such as Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935), Born to Dance (1936) and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) with James Cagney, in which she performed the popular song "Over There". In several of these films such as Broadway Melody she appeared as herself.
From 1941 she worked on Bob Hope's radio show, and during World War II she performed frequently with Hope entertaining troops. Her association with Hope continued into the 1980s; in 1989 she joined him for a USO tour.
She worked for several years in the late 1940s on Spike Jones' show before being teamed with Don Ameche for a short-lived television program, The Frances Langford/Don Ameche Show (1951), a spin-off of their successful radio series The Bickersons in which the duo played a feuding married couple. Langford was also the host of a variety television program Frances Langford Presents, which lasted one season.
Frances Langford married three times. Her first husband, from 1934 until 1955, was actor Jon Hall. In 1955, she married Outboard Marine Corporation owner Ralph Evinrude. They moved to her estate in Jensen Beach, Florida and opened the Outrigger Resort where Langford frequently performed. Evinrude died in 1986. In 1994 she married Harold Stuart, who had been assistant secretary of the United States Air Force under President Harry S. Truman and who survived her. She had no children. Frances Langford was a supportive member of the Jensen Beach community and constantly donated money to the community. She died at her Jensen Beach home after suffering from congestive heart failure, aged 92.
Although her greatest successes were in radio, her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1500 Vine Street, acknowledges her contribution to motion pictures.
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