Great Singer of the Week: Marjorie Lawrence

Today, boys and girls, we feature the late, great Marjorie Lawrence.  Miss Lawrence was cut down from a mighty career by polio, but after a time in retirement returned to the stage to sing roles in operas that were staged around her inability to move around, and also did concerts.

I might not have known of Marjorie Lawrence had not my high school chorus teacher studied with her. The story goes that, in her early years teaching, my teacher had taken a gaggle of students with her to a concert Miss Lawrence performed in Charlotte, NC. She took the students backstage to meet the diva, and the students raved about their own teacher. This led to a personal audition with Miss Lawrence and an offer to study with her at Tulane University.













And now the clips!

Ho-jo-to-ho, live, 1935

Let us not forget Marjorie Lawrence was Australian.  Here she is singing for her Australian boys during WWII::

Götterdämmerung, 1936:

Almost 10 minutes of Australian anthems to piano accompaniment on Collumbia, :

Award-winning 10-minute 2011 (?) documentary by 12-y.o. Isabel LeVan.  It made me cry. 

Dammit, all these videos are making me cry! This is from the movie Interrupted Melody, with Eleanor Parker as Miss Lawrence, and Eileen Farrell singing: