A Star is Born

Haymes was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on September 13, 1916. That’s something that most biographies agree on. And that his father was of Scottish and Irish descent and that his mother was Irish, a former musical comedy star, raised in the United States. They also agree that the family moved to America soon after his birth. But while some say that Benjamin Haymes was a cattle rancher in financial trouble in Argentina, others report that he and Marguerite Haymes were on vacation in Buenos Aires when Dick was born.

Whatever the circumstances of his birth, his father was soon out of the picture. Marguerite and Benjamin had another son, Bob, and then separated when Dick was just two years old. Dick’s mother moved with the boys, to Paris, opened a dress shop and prospered for awhile. The 1929 Stock Market Crash and the Depression took their toll on her business. She closed the store and returned to New York where she worked as a singer and voice teacher.

Go West, Young Man

Haymes made his professional debut at age 15, singing with the band at a hotel in New Jersey. The bandleader had seen Dick’s performance in an amateur production at the hotel and liked what he heard. Haymes began getting gigs with local bands but finally left school in 1933 and headed for Hollywood.

Once there, he formed a band which didn’t last long. He sang, without pay, on a local radio station in Los Angeles and worked as a stuntman or extra at MGM to make enough money to live on.

Haymes and brother Bob both wrote songs, but while Bob would go on to success in that area (one of his compositions is “That’s All”), Dick’s songwriting talents didn’t impress the bandleader he showed them to. Harry James was, however, quite taken by the voice singing those unimpressive songs.When Frank Sinatra left the James band to work for Tommy Dorsey, James hired Haymes.

It was a successful pairing. Haymes with the James band, recorded such hits as “Fools Rush In”, “A Sinner Kissed An Angel” and I’ll Get By”, which didn’t get to number one til 1944, three years after it was recorded.

Wedding Bells

During this period, 1939-1942, Haymes married twice. The first marriage was to singer Edythe Harper, but that ended quickly and rarely gets much attention from biographers. Then, in 1941, while playing the Paramount Theater in New York with the James Band, Haymes began to pay more attention to another act on the same bill, The Samba Sirens, particularly to one named Joanne LaCock (Joanne Dru, sister of singer/game-show host Peter Marshall).

Dick and Joanne married on September 21, 1941. She was 18 years old. A few months later, they were expecting their first child and Haymes began looking for greener pastures and more money than James was paying him.

He went to work for Benny Goodman, recording “Serenade in Blue” and “(I’ve Got a Gal in) Kalamzoo” before jumping to Tommy Dorsey’s band. Once again, he replaced Sinatra as the “boy singer”. He stayed with Dorsey for about 18 months, appearing with the band in the MGM musical, “Dubarry Was a Lady”, before deciding to go out on his own.

A recording contract with Decca was offered to Haymes in 1943. He signed with the label and one of his first singles went to number 1 that same year - “You’ll Never Know”.

Haymes also had his own radio program on CBS and Twentieth Century Fox signed him to a seven year contract.

Life in the Movies

He starred in a number of Fox musicals over the next few years, most notably the remake of State Fair, opposite Vivian Blaine. He also starred with Betty Grable in Diamond Horseshoe and the not as successful The Shocking Miss Pilgrim. (Critics said the failure of that film may have been due to the failure to show Betty Grable’s famous legs. She played a turn-of-the-century typist with skirts down to her ankles!).

Haymes’ movies produced their own music magic, with high-charting hits like “Put Your Arms Around Me, Honey,” “The More I See You”, “I Wish I Knew”, “Laura,” “Till the End of Time”, “That's for Me.”, “Stella, by Starlight”, and the Oscar-winning “It Might as Well Be Spring”.

Haymes and singer Helen Forrest had worked together with the Harry James band. They also shared an agent, during this period of the mid-40’s, who wisely put the two together on radio. From that show came more hit recordings as well as an enduring friendship. Between 1944 and 1947, Haymes and Forrest recorded songs like “All Through The Day”, “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” and “Oh! What It Seemed To Be”.

When his deal with Fox ended, Universal signed Haymes for a couple of movies, Up in Central Park and One Touch of Venus with Ava Gardner.

Got the World On a String

Professionally, Haymes was doing great.. personally, things were not so hot. He and Joanne Dru had three children by 1949, Richard, Jr., Joanna (known as Pigeon or Pidge), and Barbara, but the marriage was not working.

Troubled Times

Haymes had a couple of problems - a love for drinking and a kind of blitheness, almost innocence, about financial obligations.

Dru’s brother, Peter Marshall, says, in an interview with JazzConnectionMag.com:

Dick made a lot of mistakes. Women and booze got in the way. You got to remember, Sinatra was down, too, at one time. But he made this marvelous come back. He was handled beautifully. Dick just blew a great career. At one time he had a better career than Sinatra. He sold more records than anybody. For two years in a row, Dick was the highest paid American, including the head of AT&T.... Money to him was nothing. He wasn’t organized that way. If you needed money and asked Dick, he’d give you, say, $100. If he needed money and you gave him $100, he would forget that he owed you!

Another source of trouble in the Haymes’ home may have been the demand for Joanne’s services as an actress. She was getting a lot of work and fan magazines reported that Haymes wasn’t happy about that.

Haymes and Dru divorced in 1949. Haymes quickly married again, this time to Nora Eddington, an ex-wife of Errol Flynn.

Haymes was still recording for Decca at this time. He also was doing radio from time to time, including the show “Club 15”, and still making movies, but they weren’t doing as well at the box office as his Fox musicals had. One notable failure was the 1953 Cruisin’ Down the River. But this movie would be a turning point in his life.. on the set of this film, he met Rita Hayworth.

Enter Rita, Exit Nora

Hayworth was fresh from her divorce from Prince Aly Khan. She and Haymes began a romance. He divorced Nora and followed Rita to Hawaii where she was filming Miss Sadie Thompson. But Hawaii was a U.S. territory at that time, not a state, and when Haymes tried to return to California, he was arrested by Immigration and slated for deportation to Argentina.

Undesirable Alien

The reason was that in 1944, when Haymes became concerned that he would be drafted, he had drawn on his Argentine birth, and registered as a “resident alien”. He later claimed that his decision was based on family concerns, that Joanne had had a tough time with the birth of their second child and that he wanted to remain with her. When she recovered, he said, he withdrew the deferment and tried to enlist, but was turned down, twice, due to high blood pressure. But by waiving his right to become an American citizen, he was now required to obtain a re-entry permit if he ever left the United States. And he had not obtained one before leaving Hawaii.

Blame it on the Studio

Haymes blamed Columbia Pictures and Harry Cohn. He claimed that Cohn hated him and disapproved of his relationship with Hayworth. Rita stuck by him during this period. They married at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas on September 24th, 1953, with a guest list that included more than 20 television, radio and newspaper reporters. The wedding described by Time Magazine as being produced and directed by a press agent was not attended by two of the most prominent Hollywood women of the press. Louella Parsons claimed she was too busy to attend and Hedda Hopper angrily said she wasn’t invited, which may have been another indication that Rita’s studio disapproved.

The IRS Comes Calling

Immigration wasn’t the only branch of the government looking for a piece of Dick Haymes. The IRS wanted to talk with him about some back taxes. And then there was the matter of child-support for his three children with Joanne Dru and alimony owed to third wife, Nora Eddington.

Hayworth had problems of her own, battling with her ex, Aly Khan, for custody of their daughter, Yasmin. She and Haymes took a trip to Florida about this time in a borrowed Jaguar, leaving Yasmin and her other daughter, Rebecca Welles, with a New Jersey antiques dealer, an old friend of the Haymes family. Reporters got wind of the trip, and so did the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children which took Rita to court, claiming neglect. The charges were dropped and Rita retained custody of the girls, but the problems didn’t help the Haymes-Hayworth marriage. And the headlines didn’t help Haymes’ career.

Things Fall Apart

There were reports that Rita had begun drinking more and clearly, Haymes was not drinking any less. Fan magazines reported that Rita and Haymes were fighting and implied that he had become physically abusive. The marriage ended in divorce in late 1955 and Haymes career was in bad shape. He signed with Capitol Records and began appearing in nightclubs and it looked as though he was starting to turn things around. He recorded the albums, Rain or Shine and Moondreams around this time.

In 1958, he married a 21 year old singer named Fran Makris, known professionally as Fran Jeffries and the two began singing together, in clubs and on TV. They had a daughter, Stephanie, but the marriage couldn’t survive his drinking. Jeffries also told interviewers that she was getting offers for solo work and that Haymes didn’t like that.

By 1960, Haymes had declared bankruptcy, reporting that he had $9 in his bank account and assets of $5500, and that he owed more than $500,000. Some of those debts were child support and alimony. He and Jeffries separated in 1961, and Haymes decided to pick himself up, dust himself off and start all over again, this time in Europe. It proved to be a good move.

Things Come Together

Haymes had some success, singing in night clubs, kicking his drinking habit and marrying for the sixth time. Soon after the divorce from Fran Jeffries was final, he and Wendy Smith, a former model, were married. It would prove to be the longest of his marriages. Wendy Smith remained with Haymes through the rest of his life, and the couple had two children, a son, Sean, and a daughter, Samantha.

Haymes also recorded an album in 1969, Now and Then, before moving back to the United States in the early 1970’s. He performed at clubs and did a live recording at the Coconut Grove. He began appearing on television, guest-starring on “McMillan & Wife”, “McCloud” and “Adam 12”, among others. He did “The Tonight Show” and began touring with Helen Forrest and Harry James as Big Band music enjoyed a revival.

Haymes returned to the recording studio in 1976 and 1977, recording the albums For You, For Me, Forever More and As Time Goes By, and it looked as if he was going to reclaim at least some of the success he had had in the early 40’s.

Gone Too Soon

But life had other plans. Haymes was diagnosed with lung cancer, and died in Los Angeles, on March 28, 1980. He was just 63 years old.

Haymes left his music library to Peter Marshall, who says he remained close to the singer even after his sister and Haymes were divorced. Marshall says that Haymes was like a big brother, a father-figure, to him and that he continues to learn so much from listening to Haymes recordings.

Quoting Marshall’s interview with Jazz Connection Mag again:

The 'instrument' he had was the best instrument I ever heard! Nobody had that gorgeous of an instrument. Nobody ever had a better sound than Dick Haymes! Sinatra maybe did a better interpretation of sounds, but Dick was a very honest singer.... He honored the songwriter.... As long as good music is going to be played, they’ll be playing Dick Haymes, if they’re smart, that is.

Side Notes:

Websites worth mentioning:

Dick Haymes is represented on the Web, but you have to dig a little to find the gold.

DickHaymes.com is a fansite with a lengthy biography and ties to the Dick Haymes Society. The Society works to keep Haymes’ name in the public consciousness and publishes a magazine with articles about Haymes and others. No dues, but donations accepted.

Other biographies of Haymes can be found on the Internet Movie Database site, Big Bands and Big Names, and the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. AllMusic.com is another good resource along with Yahoo and mp3.com. There is an online encyclopedia of Big Band music called “Solid!” which includes a biography of Haymes.

An article with a different interpretation (and possibly more facts) about Haymes’ life, especially the early years, is from a magazine called Classic Images. This page will turn up in a general search for Dick Haymes: Classic Images July, 1997, and it is referenced on other sites about Haymes. But if you go to the Classic Images site, itself, the article can be hard to find. The author of the article is Laura Wagner.

And, along the lines of information turning up in the most interesting places if you look hard enough, Haymes’ former brother-in-law, Peter Marshall, offers insights and memories of Haymes in an interview published on the Jazz Connection Mag site.

Time magazine also has some archives mentioning Haymes, online, particularly the milestones and events columns. They include this account of Haymes’ wedding to Rita Hayworth, produced by a press agent.

An indication of Haymes’ popularity in the 1940’s is a song that Sinatra would sing at Army camp shows and occasionally to warm up an audience.. “Dick Haymes, Dick Todd and Como”. It was a parody of a Jimmy Van Heusen song and the lyrics talk about how those other guys (Haymes, Todd and Perry) were breathing down Frank’s neck. The lyrics can be found at the Spirit of Sinatra Website, and you can listen to a clip of the song on this Sinatra recording, V-Discs: Columbia Years (1943-52)

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