JULIE LONDON

Julie London was born Julie Peck in 1926, and in 1943 she was working as an elevator operator and was "discovered" by agent Sue Carol (Alan Ladd's wife) and she signed a contract, and soon appeared in Esquire, and became on the top "pin-ups" during World War II. The next year she made her film debut while still in high school, in the super low budget Nabonga. She appeared in a number of movies, but in 1947 married Dragnet's Jack Webb, and "retired". After divorcing Webb 7 years later, she both resumed making movies AND singing in jazz clubs and releasing records, where her super sultry voice caused her to be named the most popular female vocalist for 1955, 1956, and 1957 and she sang in some movies, and also on some soundtracks. In the 1960s she released lots of albums and she appeared in lots of TV shows (drama and game shows) often with Bobby Troup, a musician on her early albums, who she had married in 1959. She had remained close with ex-husband Jack Webb and he cast both her and Troup in his 1972 TV show Emergency! It ran for 6 seasons, and London retired again (she had managed to have five kids along the way). She rarely gave any interviews and never discussed the breakup of her marriage to Webb. She was a chain smoker from the age of 16, and she suffered a stroke in 1995 and got lung cancer in 1999 and passed away in 2000, at the age of 74.