Jane Pickens Langley - Serious About Her Music

Serious About Her Music

Mrs. Hoving, who arranged the group's numbers, was the most serious about music. She studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and the Fontainebleau in France and won fellowships at the Juilliard School where she studied with Anna E. Schoen-René. Several times she dropped out of public appearances to resume formal training.

She sang in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 in a cast that included Fanny Brice and Gypsy Rose Lee. In 1940 she played opposite Ed Wynn in Boys and Girls Together on Broadway. Brooks Atkinson's review said she had "a most attractive voice."

A turning point came in the 1940s when, unsatisfied with her career, she consulted Robert Alton, a music arranger. He told her that she came across as aloof, which he attributed to her feeling defensive. His analysis was a revelation. "I woke up the next morning absolutely healed," she said. "That wall was just gone."

In 1949 she won acclaim for starring in the lead of Regina, the musical version of The Little Foxes. One review said her performance was "in every way admirable." Jack Gould wrote that she "sings and acts with the ferocity of a poisonous snake."

Mrs. Hoving pursued her music career alone and had wide-ranging success, from musical comedy to opera and nightclub engagements as well as her own shows on NBC radio and ABC television. The World-Telegram said in 1940: "She's probably the most beautiful woman on Broadway with a voice."

In 1954, Pickens appeared in a 15-minute ABC television musical series, The Jane Pickens Show, which was replaced in the spring by The Martha Wright Show.

She frequently performed benefits for charitable causes, including events for orphans, hospitals, youths, veterans and the disabled. When her career tapered off in the late 1950s, she turned to running hundreds of fund-raising affairs. Among her favorite causes were the Salvation Army and research into heart disease and cerebral palsy, a condition that afflicted her daughter.