Nanette Fabray

Fabray was born Ruby Bernadette Nanette Theresa Fabares on October 27, 1920, in San Diego, to Lily Agnes (McGovern), a housewife, and Raoul Bernard Fabares, a train conductor.[2] She used one of her middle names, Nanette, as her first name in honor of a beloved aunt from San Diego, whose name was also Nanette. Throughout life, she often went by the nickname Nan, and to a lesser extent, by close friends or relatives, sometimes Nanny-goat.[1] Her family resided in Los Angeles, and Fabray's mother was instrumental in getting her daughter involved in show business as a child. At a young age, she studied tap dance with, among others, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. She made her professional stage debut as "Miss New Years Eve 1923" at the Million Dollar Theater at the age of three.[3] She spent much of her childhood appearing in vaudeville productions as a dancer and singer under the name “Baby Nan.” She appeared with stars such as Ben Turpin. Raised by what would now likely be known as a stage mom, Fabray herself was not much interested in show business until later on, and never believed in pushing children into performing at a young age, instead wishing for them to be able to live out their childhoods as opposed to having to deal with adult concerns at a young age.[1] Her early dance training, however, did lead her always to consider herself a tap dancer first and foremost.[4] Contrary to popular misinformation from an undying rumor, she was never a regular or reoccurring guest of the Our Gang series; she did, however, appear as an extra one single time, a guest among many other children in a party scene.[1]

Fabray's parents divorced when she was nine, but they continued living together for financial reasons. During the Great Depression, her mother turned their home into a boarding house, which Fabray and her siblings helped run, Nanette’s main job being ironing clothes.[1] In her early teenage years, Fabray attended the Max Reinhardt School of the Theatre on a scholarship. She then attended Hollywood High School, participating in the drama program with a favorite teacher, where she graduated in 1939.[1] She beat out classmate Alexis Smith for the lead in the school play her senior year. Fabray entered Los Angeles Junior College in the fall of 1939, but did not do well and withdrew a few months later.[1] She had always had difficulty in school due to an undiagnosed hearing impairment, which made learning difficult. She eventually was diagnosed with a conductive hearing loss (due to congenital, progressive otosclerosis) in her twenties after an acting teacher encouraged her to get her hearing tested. Fabray said of the experience, "It was a revelation to me. All these years I had thought I was stupid, but in reality I just had a hearing problem." Fabray gave many interviews over the years and much of the information known about her was revealed in these conversations. In 2004, she was interviewed[1] for posterity in the oral history Archives of American Television as an Emmy TV legend.

Fabray's first husband, David Tebet, was in television marketing and talent, and later became a vice president of NBC.[9] According to Fabray, their marriage ended in divorce partially because of her depression, anxiety, and insecurities surrounding her worsening hearing loss. Her second husband was screenwriter Ranald MacDougall, whose writing credits include Mildred Pierce and Cleopatra and who, in the early 1970s, served as president of the Writers Guild of America. The couple were married from 1957 until his death in 1973. They had one son together: Jamie MacDougall.[2] She was a resident of Pacific Palisades, California, and was the aunt of singer/actress Shelley Fabares. Her niece's 1984 wedding to M*A*S*H actor Mike Farrell was held at her home.[10] Longtime neighbors, Fabray was associated with Ronald Reagan's campaign for the governorship of California in 1966.[11]

She was hospitalized for almost two weeks after being knocked unconscious by a falling pipe backstage during a live broadcast of Caesar's Hour in 1955.[2] The audience in the studio heard her screams and Sid Caesar had at first been told she had been killed in the freak accident. Fabray suffered a serious concussion along with associated temporary vision impairment and photosensitivity/photophobia. Later, she realized she had only avoided being directly impaled because of the position she happened to have been in at the time (bending over as opposed to standing up straight).[12] In 1978, during the filming of Harper Valley PTA, Fabray suffered a second major concussion when she was knocked over, hitting her neck on the sidewalk and the back of her head on a rock. The accident was caused when a live elephant appearing in the film stampeded when spooked by a drunken civilian bystander, who had bypassed the blocked-off street on the set. Fabray suffered associated memory loss and visual issues such as nystagmus, but still had to finish her scenes (namely a car chase) in the movie, for which filming had not yet wrapped. She had to be closely directed and coached, fed line-by-line, as she could not remember any of her lines or cues due to the concussion. She also had to be filmed only from specific angles to mask the obvious abnormal eye movements the concussion had temporarily caused.[13]

A longtime champion of hearing awareness and support of the deaf, she sat on boards and spoke at many related functions. A forward-thinking proponent of total communication and teaching the deaf language and communication in any way possible, including American Sign Language and not just the oralism method of the time, Fabray was one of, if not the first, to use sign language on [live] television,[14] something which she continued to showcase on many programs on which she made appearances, including the Carol Burnett Show, Match Game ‘73, and I’ve Got a Secret. She even contributed the story line to an entire 1982 episode of One Day at a Time, which focused on hearing loss awareness and acceptance, treatment options, and sign language. Fabray appeared in a 1986 infomercial for hearing device and deafness support products for House Ear Institute.[15] In 2001, she wrote to advice columnist Dear Abby to decry the loud background music played on television programs.[16] A founding member of the National Captioning Institute,[1] she also was one of the first big names[17] to bring awareness to the need for media closed-captioning.[18]

Likewise, after the passing of her second husband, Randy MacDougall, Fabray also started to learn about the tribulations associated with spousal death and began to bring awareness to the need for changes in the law for widows and widowers.[19] She focused her later years on campaigning for widows’ rights, particularly pertaining to women’s inheritance laws, taxes, and asset protection.[20]

Nanette Fabray died on February 22, 2018, at the Canterbury Nursing home in California at the age of 97 from natural causes.[21]

A Tony and three-time Primetime Emmy award winner, Nanette Fabray has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[22] In 1986, she received a Life Achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild.

She won a Golden Apple award from the Hollywood Women’s Press Club in 1960 along with Janet Leigh for being a Most Cooperative actress.

She was awarded the President's Distinguished Service Award and the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award for her long efforts on behalf of the deaf and hard-of-hearing.[22]

• The Miracle (1939)
• Six Characters in Search of an Author (1939)
• The Servant of Two Masters (1939)
• Meet the People (1940)
• Let's Face It! (1941)
• By Jupiter (1942) (replacement for Constance Moore)
• My Dear Public (1943)
• Jackpot (1944)
• Bloomer Girl (1945; 1947; 1949)
• High Button Shoes (1947)
• Love Life (1948)
• Arms and the Girl (1950)
• Make a Wish (1951)
• Mr. President (1962)
• No Hard Feelings (1973)
• Applause (1973)
• Plaza Suite (1975)
• Wonderful Town (1975)
• The Secret Affairs of Mildred Wild (1977)
• Call Me Madam (1979)
• Cactus Flower (1984)
• Prince of Central Park (1989) (replacement for Jo Anne Worley)
• The Bermuda Avenue Triangle (1997)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Nanette Fabray.

• Nanette Fabray at the Internet Broadway Database
• Nanette Fabray at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Nanette Fabray at IMDb
• Nanette Fabray at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television