Alice Faye in the movies

Those of us who knows Faye best from her old radio show with husband Phil Harris may not appreciate how big a movie star she was in her day. In 1937 she reportedly was second-biggest female box office draw in the country behind Shirley Temple. 

After the walked off the set during the filming of Fallen Angel, she was black-listed by Darryl Zanuck, the producer, and her movie career was basically over. But by that time she and Phil Harris had two daughters. She later said, "When I stopped making pictures, it didn't bother me because there were so many things I hadn't done. I had never learned to run a house. I didn't know how to cook. I didn't know how to shop. So all these things filled all those gaps."

She and husband Harris were the stars of their own comedy radio show, which ran for eight years and was very popular. It allowed Faye to split time between the program and home with her daughters, since it required much less time than movies.

An interesting footnote: the tight corsets Faye wore for the filming of the movie Lillian Russell caused her to collapse on the set several times and it shrank her waist six inches. Ladies, that is doing it the hard way!