Going Home: Dale Evans

The Milwaukee Journal – Jun 27, 1943

Going Home

PERT, redheaded Dale Evans is going home. For only two weeks mind you, but where she’s going is Texas, stranger, and that means the whole state will be clapping hands. Dale, you see, is another local girl—like Ginger Rogers, Mary Martin and Ann Sheridan—who has made good.

First it was as a soloist with Anson Weeks and his band, then coast to coast billing as the singer on radio's CharlieMcCarthy’s and Edgar Bergen’s NBC half hour, and now a promising career in the movies, in addition to the new contract as Charlie’s singer next season.

Dale’s taking advantage of the show’s summer vacation to do a concentrated job of entertaining Uncle Sam’s boys in and around Texas, and at the same time visiting the home folks near Dallas.

Dale was born in Italy, Tex. Outside of a few years spent in Memphis, Tenn. (where she graduated from Central high school), she spent the first 20 years of her life there.

Dale was all set to make a career in business, having secured for herself a promising job as secretary in the office of an insurance company in Dallas. And then her boss made a move that lost him the best secretary he ever had and gave the music world a real trouper. He heard her humming a tune one day and suggested she try out for the company’s radio program on a local station. She did. She clicked. In no time at all she was launched on her career as singer on an early morning “cheer up” show. That was more than five years ago and Dale hasn’t been on the other side of a reception desk since. But she hasn’t forgotten what she learned. She’s the only singer in radio who sings from shorthand notes!

Fram Dallas, Dale went to Chicago, where she became the soloist with Anson Weeks’ band. Then for two and a half years she starred in various Chicago radio shows. A movie scout saw her, suggested Hollywood and in a few weeks she was under contract to one of the studios. However, in spite of Dale’s charm and voice, she never quite conquered motion pictures that first try. But she kept improving herself—taking acting and dancing lessons, trying new techniques with her voice. She was rewarded with the coveted spot on NBC as Charlie McCarthy’s singer.

This rise in national radio brought  Dale Evans again to the attention of the movies and this time she was in a more favorable spot to really show what she could do. You’ll see her as the feminine lead in “Hoosier Holiday.”