Today is the birthday of Lulu McConnell (1882-1962), best remembered as a cast member on the radio & tv parody game show “It Pays to be Ignorant” from 1942 through 1951. The daughter of a Kansas City dentist, she ran off to join a traveling theatre troupe as a teenager. In the nineteen-teens she formed a sketch comedy two act with her husband Grant Simpson. The team (and occasionally Lulu solo) moved up to Broadway shows in the 20s, mostly revues like Snapshots of 1921, Ziegfeld Follies of 1922, The Passing Show of 1924, Artists and Models (1925), The Vanderbilt Revue (1930) and Ballyhoo of 1932. Simpson passed away in 1932. For a change of venue, she did a very few motion pictures, and then lucked into radio.
To find out more about the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
(Travalanche) 