RUSS COLUMBO Russ Columbo's career reads as a metaphor of unfulfilled promise; for what might have been. By the time of his tragic death at the age of twenty-six, he was generally conceded to reside at the pinnacle of the crooning genre, the chief rival to the hegemony enjoyed by Rudy Vallee and Bing Crosby. Like these stars, his popularity cut across fan publications, sound recordings, radio, and the cinema. Yet Columbo's legacy - a body of recorded work intermittently spread over a mere five years - provides slim evidence in support of such a lofty assessment. As a result, he has received only passing mention from the vast majority of sources concerned with chronicling the popular music of that era.Born January 14, 1908, Ruggerio de Rodolfo Columbo came from a large Catholic family. His parents, Nicholas and Julia Columbo (died, May 1942 and August 1944, respectively), gave birth to numerous children, including Albert (d. August 1946), Anthony (d. February 1965), John (d. August 1967), Alonzo (death date unknown), Fiore (d. 1929), Florence Columbo LoDuca (d. 1919), Anna Columbo (d. September 1940), and Carmela Columbo Tempest (d. January 1986), and an unidentified number who died as infants. Evidence differs as to whether the place of birth was in San Francisco or Camden, New Jersey; at any rate, he seems to have spent portions of his early childhood in both locations.
As his Italian-born father was a theater musician, Russ grew up in an atmosphere permeated by music. He was provided guitar and violin lessons beginning as a young boy. While a teenager, his family moved from the Napa Valley, California town of Calistoga to Los Angeles. There, Russ joined his high school's orchestra as a violinist. In addition, he was able to secure additional experience playing "mood music" in small combos on silent movie sets. Film companies of that day utilized musicians as a means of helping actors achieve the proper frame of mind for interpreting their respective roles.
One of these gigs resulted in actress Pola Negri taking an interest in Columbo. Negri, one of the leading film stars of the 1920s, had been romantically involved with the famed Rudolph Valentino. Noting a physical resemblance between the two, she assisted Russ in landing small roles in a number of late 1920s movies. At the same, Columbo regularly found work as a violinist in hotel and theater orchestras around Los Angeles. When a band singer became ill immediately prior to a CBS radio program being broadcast from the Hollywood Roosevelt, Russ was quickly recruited to go on as his replacement.
As a result, he able to secure a position with Gus Arnheim and His Cocoanut Grove Orchestra. The Arnheim association elevated Columbo to the big leagues. Arnheim - a widely known pianist, composer, and bandleader who'd played with Abe Lyman during 1921-1923 - toured the U.S. and Europe heading his own ensemble in the mid-1920s. Notable musicians under his baton over the years would include Jimmie Grier, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Stan Kenton, Bing Crosby, Shirley Ross, and actor Fred MacMurray.
He began recording in 1928 (his first release was "I Can't Do Without You"; Okeh 41057) and his 1931 release, "Sweet and Lovely," would be one of the biggest hit recordings of all-time. Russ would be regularly featured on records as his lead vocalist between 1929-1931 prior to making it big on his own. While officially signed as a violinist, Arnheim considered Columbo a standby vocalist because his featured singer, Bing Crosby, had exhibited erratic behavior brought on largely by bouts of heavy drinking.
When Grove's manager, Abe Frank, attempted to levy a fine on Crosby for missing a show, the talented singer left for good. Tabbed to fill the void, Columbo immediately flourished as Arnhaim's featured vocalist. Building on the bit movie parts filmed during the day to supplement his band work by night, Russ attracted considerable public attention for his scenes with the Arnheim band in the 1929 musical, Street Girl. After touring the East Coast with Arnheim, Columbo attempted to strike out on his own, forming a band and opening a nightclub with two of his brothers in Los Angeles. The Depression-era economy, however, greatly limited his success on both fronts.
But his fortunes resumed an upward trajectory when Con Conrad - best known as the composer of "Ma, He's Making Eyes at Me" and the first song to win an Academy Award, "The Continental" - offered to manage him. Allegedly aggressive to a fault, Conrad used all of his persuasive powers to convince Columbo that he was, in the words of Crosby biographer Barry Ulanov, "the great singer of the time and would have no trouble with his career." Conrad took Russ out of his nightclub and band, in which he had been playing violin and guitar and singing a little in the Crosby style, bought him a top hat and resplendent dress suit, and had him photographed to best advantage. These efforts enabled Columbo land a contract for an NBC radio program airing weekdays at 11 p.m..
When Bing Crosby was signed to head a comparable program for CBS in the same time slot, network executives saw the potential for a publicity bonanza. The rivalry - which was further fueled by Crosby's defection from RCA to record for Brunswick, followed by RCA's signing of Columbo - was billed as the "Battle of the Baritones" and some of the resulting coverage strained the boundaries of good taste.
On September 2, just hours before his regular Sunday evening radio program, Columbo stopped by to see his life-long friend, Lansing V. Brown, Jr., who lived with his parents at 584 Lillian Way in Beverly Hills.
He was going to have some publicity shots taken by Brown, who was highly respected as still camera man and much in demand as a portrait photographer. After the photos has been taken, they talked about a common interest, antique pistol collecting. Brown then produced a pair of duelling pistols which dated from the Civil War, part of his own collection of curios.
He placed the head of a match under the rusty hammer of one of the pistols with a flourish, then pulled the trigger to ignite the match in order to light a cigarette. The pistol, which evidently hadn’t been used for over sixty-five years, still housed a charge of powder and an old bullet. The chick of the hammer caused the charge to explode and the corroded bullet struck the top of a table located between the two friends, ricocheted, striking Columbo in the left eye, then entering his brain. Rushed to the Good Samaritan Hospital, it was discovered that the bullet, after piercing the center of the brain, had fractured the rear wall of the skull. A brain specialist summoned to the scene, Dr. George Paterson, counseled against the delicate operation being considered unless Columbo’s rapidly waning strength could be restored.
The singer lingered in agony for six hours before dying; the doctors were amazed that he hadn’t been killed instantly. Bedside mourners included members of his family and former girlfriend, Sally Blane. Those outside in the hospital corridor included Lombard, who had heard of the tragedy by telephone at Lake Arrowhead where Columbo was to have joined her to vacation the following week, film producer Carl Laemmle, and other film celebrities. Brown would collapsed following police interrogation; their suspicions had been aroused by a statement from a servant who alleged that he’d heard Columbo and the photographer arguing violently in the den.
However, Brown was released following a court inquest. The verdict: "This jury finds that Russ Columbo came to his death by a gun wound accidentally inflicted by Lansing Brown. Brown is absolved of all blame…." The singer’s relatives and friends agreed with this ruling. A number of professional "dirt" diggers, an inevitable consequence of the Hollywood scene, spread stories of suicide due to an unrequited romance. Brown would grieve until his own passing decades later. A crowd of 3000 persons attended funeral services at the Sunset Boulevard Catholic Church in Hollywood. The pallbearers were Bing Crosby, Gilbert Roland, Walter Lang, Stuart Peters, Lowell Sherman, and Sheldon Keate Callaway.
Columbo’s seven surviving brothers and sisters conspired to keep news about the death from their mother. Having suffered a heart attack two days prior to Columbo’s accident, they were concerned that the shock of hearing about his death would kill her. A story was concocted about Columbo agreeing to a five-year tour abroad. While money from his life insurance policy was used to support her, the deception was maintained for a decade until she died. The family employed a variety of strategems during this period including sending letters, allegedly written by the singer, which contained newsy accounts, tender sentiments, and reports of his many successes. Warren Hall noted, in the October 8, 1944 issue of The American Weekly (a Sunday supplement distributed in the Hearst syndicated newspapers), that they took the further precaution of imprinting each envelope with a rubber stamp to simulate a London postmark. The same stamp was conspicuous on the wrappings of the Christmas and birthday gifts which arrived "from your loving son." The family also played records in order to simulate his radio program.
The only radio shows actually heard in the Columbo household were those that made no mention of bandleaders. Even though his mother was almost totally blind, all newspapers coming into the house were carefully censored. Lombard assisted by corresponding with Mrs. Columbo, explaining that her son was unable to visit because he was performing in the major cities of Europe. All visitors were warned to speak as though Russ were still alive and more popular than ever. According to Hall, when Mrs. Columbo died in 1944 at the age of 78, her last words were: "Tell Russ…I am so proud…and happy." Many music historians have openly questioned whether the "Battle of the Baritones" would have turned out differently if Columbo’s life hadn’t been tragically ended.
According to Deal, Rudy Vallee was one man in the business who thought so, on account of Crosby’s drinking habits in the early thirties, believing that Bing many have lost some popularity if Columbo’s career had continued. Johnny Mercer disagreed for he took the view that Columbo did not possess Crosby’s original talent and did not have the type of personality that gave Crosby such a universal appeal.
By 1934, if not before, Russ Columbo was the finest singer of love songs in the United States and the one who had the greatest attraction for women, although the timbre of his voice also appealed to men – as did Bing Crosby’s and Al Bowlly’s. Columbo phrased rather like Crosby, in a voice more silkily textured than that of his "rival" but it is doubtful if he could have handled the more rhythmic sort of number which Crosby excelled at or, indeed, the country and western type of song, such as "Home On The Range," "The Last Round- Up" or "Empty Saddles" that Bing featured so successfully. Russ Columbo did represent the most serious challenge to Crosby and at only twenty-six years of age – he was five years younger than Bing – it is reasonable to assume that his best years were still to come. It says something for the talent and popularity of the man that it was to be almost six years before another serious challenger – in the person of Frank Sinatra – forced his way into the reckoning. Despite the relatively limited number of recordings made by Columbo during his lifetime, Crosby is probably the only crooner predating the Sinatra era to had been honored by more reissues. Over the years there have been a notable number of tribute albums to Columbo, including those of Paul Bruno, Gordon Lewis, Steve Mason, and Jerry Vale.
Although not yet a reality, many singers—including Perry Como, Don Cornell, Johnny Desmond, and Tony Martin—have been considered for the leading role in a film biography of Columbo. In the 1950s a television drama featuring Tony Curtis as the crooner got as far as the planning stage.
