Cliff Edwards
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Clifton Avon Edwards (1895 - 1971)

Clifton Avon (Cliff) "Ukulele Ike" Edwards
Born in Hannibal, Marion, Missouri, United Statesmap
[sibling(s) unknown]
Husband of — married 5 Sep 1917 (to Dec 1921) in Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United Statesmap
Husband of — married 14 May 1923 (to 22 Jun 1931) in Portland, Washington, Oregon, United Statesmap
Husband of — married 1 Sep 1932 (to 1936) in Las Vegas, Clark, Nevada, United Statesmap
Died at age 76 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United Statesmap
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Profile last modified | Created 12 Sep 2016
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Contents

Biography

Notables Project
Cliff Edwards is Notable.

Birth and Youth

Clifton Avon Edwards was born on 14 Jun 1895 in Hannibal, Missouri[1] to Edward Edwards and Nellie Farnum. Further identifying his parents has been a challenge, due in large part to the commonality of the Edwards name. Some have suggested his father may have been Edward E. Edwards of nearby Quincy, Illinois, but this is difficult to verify.

At some point in Cliff's youth, his father apparently became too ill to work and young Cliff was sent out to earn money as a newspaper butcher. According to legend, it was here that he first began singing publicly, in order to attract customers. Cliff then went to work for the Roberts, Johnson & Rand Shoe Company in Hannibal.[2]

In 1910, fifteen-year-old Cliff was residing on the farm of his uncle, Melvin Edwards, in Colfax, Missouri. Shortly thereafter, Cliff claims he left Hannibal, moving down river in St. Louis, where he found his first paid work as a singer, performing at local saloons and theaters. Eventually, he was hired by Lillian Crenshaw McIntyre to sell sheet music by singing popular ragtime songs between acts at the vaudeville shows, or between shorts at the film houses. It was at this point that Cliff first taught himself to play the ukulele in order to spruce up his act. He is said to have chosen this unusual instrument because it was the cheapest instrument in the store. [3]

As his teen years progressed, Cliff toured the Midwest with a carnival for a time, before earning his way onto the vaudeville circuit. On 5 Jun 1917, at the age of 21, Cliff registered for the World War I draft in Chicago, Illinois. At the time, he was living at 1000 Dakin St., and was working in the entertainment industry for a man named Ted Snow at the historical Delaware Building, in Chicago.[1]

First Marriage

A few months later on 5 Sep 1917, Cliff married Gertrude Benson in Chicago. He was 22, and she was 16.[4] Around this same time, Cliff got his first big break while he was playing at the Arsonia Cafe in Chicago. There, he partnered with a piano player named Bob Carleton and together the duo concocted the song Ja-Da, a simple tune with nonsensical lyrics. The song quickly became a hit in Chicago and then across the country. According to Gertrude, for a time she performed with Cliff on stage, but in February 1919 she gave birth to a child, Clifton George Edwards, after which she appears to have permanently left showbusiness.[5] Cliff, however, was soon back on the road without his family.

The 1920 Census shows Cliff living at a boarding house at 215 51st Street in New York City. He was 24 years old and married, but living alone. His wife and child remained in Chicago..[6] Cliff and Gertrude divorced the following year, in December 1921. Gertrude would recall years later, "Somewhere on the road tour, Cliff bought a ukulele, paying $4 for it." From then on, she says, "life was one long series of irritating 'plinks'. Between meals, during meals, between shows, immediately upon awaking, before retiring. Cliff plinked away the while going over and over a song until he was satisfied the plinks harmonized with his notes...I'd got up and walked out so often that I was than mildly surprised the day he walked out with his ukulele, I never saw him again until the day we met for our divorce hearing. In the meantime our attorney had arranged a settlement for our son's support." She claimed to have made a prenuptial agreement with her subsequent husband, "not to be musical or funny around the house!"[7]

Second Marriage

In 1921, Cliff released his first published song, You've Had Your Day, with lyricist Bartley Costello. He also appeared for the first time on Broadway, in The Mimic World, at the Shubert Theater. By 1922, he had become a regular member of the Ziegfeld Follies ensemble, and it was there that he met a young Follies dancer named Irene L. Wiley. The couple was wed on 14 May 1923, while on tour in Portland, Oregon.[8] In 1925, the couple was residing in an apartment at 171 W. 79th Street, in New York City. Residing with the couple was Irene's mother, Effie Wylie.[9]

In December 1924, Cliff began appearing in George and Ira Gershwin's latest musical, Lady Be Good. He was a hit, and the show cemented his fame. In 1925, he was an equal sensation in the musical Sunny, by Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern, and then in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1927 and Hollywood Review of 1929. His recording of Paddlin' Maddlin' Home reached number three on the Billboard charts in 1927 and was followed by several other popular hits including California, Hear I Come; Toot Toot, Tootsie! Goo'Bye!; It Had to Be You; and Singin' in the Rain. Over the next decade, he also published numerous musical arrangements, as well as a handful of books on how to play the ukulele. By the end of the 1920s, Cliff was bringing in as much as $4,000 per week.[10]

In 1930, Cliff was living at 8221 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, while still married to Irene Wylie, although it appears the couple was separated by this time.[11] In fact, Irene was then residing with her divorced mother a few miles away at the Wilshire Country Club. According to the era's gossip columnists, it was Irene who initially filed for separation, but it was Cliff who sued for divorce based on Irene's alleged indiscretions with blues singer Austin J. "Skins" Young. Cliff won the divorce on grounds of mental cruelty, but the judge also ruled that there was nothing but a “strong suspicion” in Cliff's allegations of Irene's misconduct with Young, and thus awarded her a property settlement of $100,000 plus one-third of all Cliff's future earnings. The divorce was finalized 22 Jun 1931, in the Superior Court of Los Angeles.[12]

That same year, in August 1931, Cliff's 12-year-old son, George, who was living with his mother in Chicago, fell and was run over by a freight train. Tragically, both of his legs were amputated. Although Cliff had made well over $1 million during the past several years, a life of excess and poor financial management, followed by a costly divorce, had now left him essentially broke. In fact, Cliff's former wife, Gertrude, had to sue him in order to get him to pay the boy's $1,200 hospital bill. A few years later, in 1935, she would have to sue him again, in order to get assistance paying for the boy's artificial legs.[13][14]

Third Marriage

On Aug 31 1932, Cliff was married for the third and final time to film actress Lucille Kelly, who had been performing under the stage name Nancy Darrow, and later adopted the name, Judith Barrett. Although the couple had been living in Los Angeles, they drove across the state line to Las Vegas, Nevada, for a quick and simple marriage ceremony.[15] It's unclear how much Lucille was aware of her new husband's financial situation, but in 1933, Cliff filed for his first bankruptcy. A few months later, Cliff was sued for attempting to hide assets. Unsurprisingly, this marriage also ended in divorce by 1936.

Film Career

Throughout the 1930s, Cliff appeared in numerous films for RKO, performing alongside such notable Hollywood luminaries as Joan Crawford, Marion Davies, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Helen Hayes, Jean Harlow, Buster Keaton, Robert Montgomery, Ronald Reagan, Rosalind Russell, Barbara Stanwyck, and Spencer Tracy. Cliff also began doing radio in 1932, starting with a show on the CBS Network. In 1939, he was cast in Gone With the Wind, as a southern soldier reminiscing about the past from his Atlanta hospital bed, while Scarlett O'Hara listened wistfully; but the producers ultimately chose to edit his scene such that Cliff's voice was heard, but his face was never shown.[16]

In 1940, Cliff was residing alone in a rented home at 8026 Selma Avenue in Los Angeles - apparently the same home at which he was living in 1935.[17][18] It was that year that Cliff was selected by Walt Disney to provide the voice of the now beloved character, Jiminy Cricket, in his upcoming animated feature, Pinocchio.[19] The film would included the song When You Wish Upon A Star, sung by Cliff Edwards over the opening credits and again in the final scene of the film. The song would go on to earn the Academy Award for Best Song of 1940, the first Disney song to receive such an honor.[20]

The following year, in 1941, Cliff was given a small voice role in the Disney film Dumbo - that of the regrettably named Jim Crow - but he would never again rise to the level of stardom he had once achieved. In April 1942, he registered for the World War II draft in Los Angeles, listing his address as 1394 Miller Drive and his occupation as "actor," employed by RKO Studios. As the person who would always know his address, he named Jack Schwab of Los Angeles.[21] He continued to do some work, but after filing for bankruptcy once again in 1941, he moved to New York where he lived on a former Navy boat converted into a floating home on the East River.[22]

Later Years and Death

In 1949, Cliff attempted something of a comeback with his own television show on CBS, but that was followed by yet another bankruptcy in 1950. By now, drugs, alcohol and gambling had all become issues for him. In 1952-53, he spent fifteen months living in Australia, before returning to the United States. By this point, Walt Disney had entered into the television arena, and Cliff was rehired by the studio to provide new Jiminy Cricket-related material for shows such as The Mickey Mouse Club, Disneyland, and Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color.[23]

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Cliff did a handful of voice overs, released a few recordings, and performed periodically; but for all practical purposes, his career was over. In 1969, he was admitted into the Virgil Convalescent Hospital in Hollywood, California, funded primarily with government and charitable assistance. That is where he died of a myocardial infraction, on 17 Jul 1971. He was 76 years old.[24] For sometime afterward, Cliff's body lay unclaimed at the Los Angeles County Morgue and was scheduled to be transferred to the UCLA Medical School research lab when the Actor's Fund of America and the Motion Picture and Television Relief Fund stepped in and arranged for a proper burial at Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood, California. Later, the Walt Disney Studios paid to have a marker placed on his grave.[25]

Despite his trials and tribulations, Cliff's legacy lives on in his music and through his now-legendary character, Jiminy Cricket. In 2002 his original recording of When You Wish Upon a Star was inducted into the Grammy Awards Hall of Fame, and has also been ranked by the American Film Institute as #7 of the 100 Greatest Songs in Film History.

Sources

  1. 1.0 1.1 "United States World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K6DX-M65 : 23 February 2021), Clifton Avon Edwards, 1917-1918.
  2. Ragtime Era Biographies, ragpiano.com, Cliff Edwards
  3. Ragtime Era Biographies, ragpiano.com, Cliff Edwards
  4. "Illinois, Cook County Marriages, 1871-1968", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N7ZY-65H : 10 March 2018), Clifton A. Edwards and Gertrude Benson, 05 Sep 1917.
  5. "Illinois, Cook County, Birth Certificates, 1871-1949," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N7SK-HYM : 18 May 2016), Clifton G Edwards, 13 Feb 1919; Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States, reference/certificate 9818, Cook County Clerk, Cook County Courthouse, Chicago; FHL microfilm 1,308,880.
  6. "United States Census, 1920", database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MJB7-473 : 2 February 2021), Cliff Edwards, 1920.
  7. Funny Men But No Jokes to their Wives, San Francisco (CA) Examiner, 26 Jan 1936, p. 91.
  8. Oregon State Marriages, 1906-1968. Ancestry.com (database online with images) Return of Marriage for Clifton A. Edwards and Irene Wiley.
  9. 1925 New York State Census, Ancestry.com (database online with images). New York County, City of New York City, AD 7, ED 39, page 6, lines 23-25, household of Clifton Edwards [image 4].
  10. Ragtime Era Biographies, ragpiano.com, Cliff Edwards
  11. "United States Census, 1930," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XCVM-45T : accessed 7 June 2021), Clifton A Edwards in household of Leon Biriuski, Los Angeles (Districts 0001-0250), Los Angeles, California, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 74, sheet 6B, line 88, family 49, NARA microfilm publication T626 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002), roll 134; FHL microfilm 2,339,869.
  12. 'Ukulele Ike' Wins Divorce Decree From Follies Girl. Daily News (Los Angeles, CA) 23 Jun 1931, p. 7.
  13. Son of Edwards, Stage Comedian, Hurt By Train, Chicago (IL) Tribune, 21 Aug 1931, p.5.
  14. Comedian Ordered to Pay Hospital Bill of Son, Chicago (IL) Tribune, 1 Oct 1931, p23.
  15. "Ukulele Ike" Married, The Weekly Pioneer-Times (Deadwood, SD) 1 Sep 1932, p1.
  16. Ragtime Era Biographies, ragpiano.com, Cliff Edwards
  17. 1940 U.S. Federal Census, Ancestry.com (database online with images). California, Los Angeles County, City of Los Angeles, ED 60-174, sheet 10A, visitation #396 , household of Cliff Edwards [image 19].
  18. "United States Census, 1940," database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K9C2-9Q5 : 6 January 2021), Cliff Edwards, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 60-174, sheet 10A, line 40, family 396, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, NARA digital publication T627. Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790 - 2007, RG 29. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012, roll 404.
  19. Jiminy Cricket voice actors
  20. When You Wish Upon A Star
  21. World War II Draft Registration Cards, Ancestry.com (database online with images) California, Registration Card 246, Cliff Edwards, serial no. 1386, (1942).
  22. Ragtime Era Biographies, ragpiano.com, Cliff Edwards
  23. Ragtime Era Biographies, ragpiano.com, Cliff Edwards
  24. Cliff Edwards, 76, ‘Ukulele Ike’ Of Stage and Film, Dies on Coast; New York Times, 22 Jul 1971, p. 36.
  25. Find A Grave: Memorial #1742.

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You have done a wonderful job one this profile. I enjoyed reading reading it and feeling the pride you have for him. Thank you.
posted by Rose Hinson

Rejected matches › L. C. Edwards (abt.1894-)