Julie London, the smoky-voiced singer who insisted she couldn't sing but whose voice sent shivers down spines and whose album covers alone turned men weak at the knees and women green with envy, died on October 18th aged 74. Her first recorded single, Cry Me a River in 1956, propelled her into musical history. Relatively unknown as an actress despite a spate of films in the 1940s, Julie London also caught fire on screen the same year as alcoholic singer Carol Larson in Jose Ferrer's The Great Man.
Theme magazine dubbed her its "most exciting new vocalist" for the year and Variety applauded the actress "who digs into a dramatic role and socks it across with aplomb . . . "
Julie London recorded more than 30 albums - among them Julie Is Her Name, Lonely Girl, Calendar Girl, About the Blues, Make Love to Me, London by Night - with that voice connoisseurs described as smoky, husky, breathy, haunting, intimate and even "a voice for a smoke-filled room".
Maybe they called it smoky because she smoked too much, she joked, and maybe breathy because she never learned how to breathe properly, and intimate because "I'm a girl who needs amplification". Despite her vaunted voice and beauty, she was known for being humble and always credited her success to good material in song or script.
When she played a pseudo Marilyn Monroe in the 1963 television drama Diamond in the Sky, Julie London scoffed at comparisons, insisting: "We're opposite types. Marilyn was the sex symbol . . . I'm strictly the housewife-mother type."
Yet Julie London's mere appearance, with her statuesque figure, had such an effect on men that critics were never certain whether her albums sold so well because of her vocal prowess or her sexy photos on the cover.
"Just as long as they buy the records I don't care why they buy 'em," she happily told the Los Angeles Times in 1961.
She was born Julie Peck in California, the daughter of a radio and vaudeville song-and-dance team, and made her vocal debut on radio at the age of three. In 1941, the family moved to Los Angeles. She dropped out of school at 15 to work as a lift operator in a department store, where she was discovered by agent Sue Carol.
At 18, she made her official film debut opposite Buster Crabbe in the 1944 Nabonga - a film she preferred to forget. Most notable of her early films was the 1947 Red House starring Edward G. Robinson.
In 1947, she married the actor Jack Webb - later to star in the television show Dragnet. They divorced in 1953.
Bobby Troup, whom she married in 1959, promoted her singing career, cajoling her and encouraging her to go public after he heard her sing beside his piano at a private party. She went on to become a recording star, appearing frequently on television's musical variety shows hosted by Dinah Shore, Bob Hope, Steve Allen, and Perry Como.
Troup, the songwriter of hits such as Route 66, even got her to write a song or two for films such as Saddle The Wind (1958) and Voice In The Mirror (1958). In the latter, she showed growing maturity as an actress, playing the wife of an alcoholic.
In 1972, having been out of the public eye for some time, she starred as Nurse Dixie McCall in the television hospital series, Emergency. The show, which was produced and often directed by her first husband Webb, also starred her second husband, Troup.
Julie London's last motion picture was The George Raft Story in 1961. Her last album was Easy Does It in 1969, which she considered her best.
Julie London: born 1926; died, October 2000