"Kathryn Grayson, whose beauty and lilting soprano brightened MGM musicals of the 1940s and 1950s including Anchors Aweigh, Show Boat and Kiss Me Kate, has died," reports the AP. "She was 88." The Auteurs community remembers her with a photo, filmography and clip, and the Baltimore Sun's classical music critic, Tim Smith, posts three more clips.
Update, 2/19: "When coloratura soprano Kathryn Grayson... sang five songs, including an aria from La Traviata, in MGM's all-star patriotic parade, Thousands Cheer (1943), she began her 10-year reign as the prima donna of Hollywood," writes Ronald Bergan in the Guardian. "With her china-doll features, little turned-up nose and patrician manner, Grayson raised the tone of more than a dozen musicals. Although opera managers did not beat a path to her door, her clear, slightly shrill, small voice carried well on film in popular classics and operatic scenes."
Image: With Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh (1945).