Marsh, Audrey.

Versatile American singer and performer, Audrey Marsh, had a successful career, primarily in live performance and on commercial radio; she also appeared at classical music recitals in New York.

Born Audrey Lois Zellman in New York City on March 18, 1911, Marsh came from a musical background. Her father, Joseph B. Zellman, a bass-baritone had come to America from Russia in the 1880s and later opened his own music school. Audrey's mother, Rose Kornicker, was a concert pianist who became Zellman's accompanist. She and Zellman recorded an extensive repertoire of voice and piano duets on the early Thomas Edison cylinders. Surrounded by music throughout her childhood, Audrey wanted to be an actress and attended the John Murray Anderson School of Drama for six months. Soon after graduating she was hired for the cast of Abie's Irish Rose. In 1927, at the age of sixteen, she went on an American tour of the play for nine months. Shortly after that, she was taken to CBS radio to audition as a singer. Marsh was given a contract and premiered on February 2, 1928 at the Brooklyn Paramount in an orchestral variety program. After that performance, she became part of the regular cast of the Wickwire Spencer Steele Show, singing ballads and popular songs of the period. During the late 1920s and 1930s, she became very well known as a radio singer and personality appearing on many shows, including the US Steel Show, Maxwell House Coffee Hour, and the Harvester Cigar Show, in which she played Esther to Jack Arthur's Harvester. She also worked for CBS, NBC, WOR, and various advertising agencies, and performed with Rudy Vallee, Fred Allen, Arthur Godfrey, Shirley Booth and many more stars of that time. In the 1940s and 1950s, she also became a popular jingle singer and performed in commercials for many products, including DUZ Soap, Schaeffer Beer, and Chevrolet. In the 1950s, she also began singing in groups, including the Mitch Miller Singers. During that period she was lead soloist on the RCA Victor show tune albums and she also was in the cast of the television version of Peter Pan. In her later years she was very active in the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA). In 1935, Audrey had married Theodore Glenn Monk, a businessman; the couple had two children: Meredith (born 1942) and Tracy (born 1948). In 1949, the family moved from Forest Hills, New York to Stamford, Connecticut. In 1986, the couple moved to Rancho Mirage, California where Tedd Monk died in 1998.

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