Ingenues / Melodears

Dorothy and Juel (1939 or 1940)

From: ginnyzender@hotmail.com

Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2020 2:57 PM

To: Brian Donahoe

Subject: A fabulous picture for the family album.

Well this was a surprise! My cousin. Patricia May (daughter of Dorothy Donahoe) just sent me this picture taken in West Berlin, which allegedly was part of a newspaper ad promoting a filmed jazz musical 'short'for a piece called HOLD THAT TIGER! The film is dated 1940. It shows the all male Victor Young Orchestra performing the piece. But I am thinking the picture was taken in 1939 or earlier.

It's simply amazing that my mom and Aunt Dorothy ...members of the ALL FEMALE jazz orchestra The Melodears somehow ended up doing a promotion in West Berlin- before the musical short film of the hit song "Hold That Tiger" became public. The video was showing up in 1940 but I think the post card picture was taken in 1939 or earlier. It was taken in West Berlin. Victor Young Orchestra was all men. The Melodears all women as you know but both played Jazz. The band connections from each side must have known each other. Maybe the managers knew each other. Isn't that amazing that this promo ended up being in a German newspaper way ahead of the musical short for this very famous Victor Young Orchestra.

I guess we will never know how it came to be..but it seems my mom's band connections, (maybe managers) and those involved with well known Victor Young, knew each other well enough to come up with this fantastic promo for a German newspaper.

Good grief ..Pat and I are lucky to be on the planet! One false move..and there might have been 2 dead ladies named Juel and Dorothy Donahoe. Can you imagine living that kind of life!


The Ingenues (the band that Juel, Mary, and Dorothy Donahoe played in)

For the photo above, according to Ginny Zender:

This IS A RARE FAMILY PHOTO WITH ALL THREE OF THEM TOGETHER. Mary the oldest was born in 1899, my mother in 1912--so pretty good age spread and they were usually doing different things and/or in different stages of life.

Mary Donahoe is FOURTH from our left; a tall-ish woman with the round-topped hat tilted handsomely to partially-cover one eye. I am really excited about this photo because there aren't many pictures of never-married almost forgotten Mary; and she was talented at so many things; painting, writing, sewing, and all those instruments she played. Dorothy is in the front row between a trombone player to our left and an accordion player on the right. She is also wearing a very long lariat-type necklace. Her features and Mary's are more angular and sharp than my more oval shaped face mother. Dorothy had the darkest hair, so she is usually recognizable in the pics. Mary had freckles and very very fair skin and a really pretty strawberry color or light red hair. My mother had more of the brighter red, also very fair with freckles, but not lanky like those two. My very young mother Juel Gertrude Foster Donahoe was only about 16 in this picture. She looks like a fresh-faced teenager alright; pulled out of Immaculata High School on Lake Shore drive in her Sophomore year, to travel across the world. I wonder how about the effect that might have had on her. She liked school and was also very good at writing and art, and played five instruments. Juel is the ninth person from our left (including the inclusion of a very short person who is not very visible in the photo). She is standing next to a lady leaning on the piano holding a brass instrument.

Dorothy on left, Mary interacting with guy, Juel on right (?)

Dorothy on 2nd from left, Mary just to right of her (?)

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-PQ9TdiAyhVk/Tao82VmKa5I/AAAAAAAAAt4/prrpwLSH6kU/s0-Ic42/page22B_xx.jpg
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-pJEN00delA8/Tao80fBHHrI/AAAAAAAAAt0/d0A9VH5PU6k/s1600-Ic42/page22_ingenues_orpheum2.jpg
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_lZFOlEBP8I/Tao8zjiPSxI/AAAAAAAAAtw/Y8nMTpxnQRU/s1600-Ic42/page22_ingenues_orpheum.jpg
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-TloJ-8yCZoA/Tao8ghg5ewI/AAAAAAAAAs8/wXYjrA_jLDE/s1600-Ic42/page18_ingenues_in_germany.jpg
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-pYi3gvTrppg/Tao8RuCR0WI/AAAAAAAAAsY/NWOXybsPs3M/s0-Ic42/page14B_juel_newspaper.jpg
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-CY5HDLiTkpE/Tao8QJtgzII/AAAAAAAAAsM/4CH9NwYPYAQ/s1600-Ic42/page14B_ingenues.jpg

_________________ Ginny Zender Feb 14, 2022, 12:40 PM

GINNY ZENDER CONTACTED BY VITAPHONE SOUND ENGINEER ABOUT THE INGENUES IN LATE 2021.

My high school best friend Nancy Taylor passed a post to me for the family online site... I changed it up so it would be more poignant and relevant. It is a new part of the story.

________

Thanks for asking Ms. Nancy Taylor my good friend. Yes that kind of advertisement is showing my mom's band leader and confidant. Juel Donahoe and Ina Ray Hutton were good friends all the way until the end. As you know it's a complicated story. Ina had a sister with a different father. Both shared their hard working black mother. But Ina had a white father. Ina from the south side, Juel from the Northside Edgewater neighborhood. Ina's Caucasian appearance created such hardship for Ina and her family. All were born in Chicago (including my mom and her two sisters also in the band), all were musically inclined. My mother Juel Donahoe Zender and her 3 sisters traveled with Ms. Hutton on an ocean- liner around the world as members of the Ingenues all female orchestra. Mom (Juel ) was only 16 years old when my grandmother Mary Foster Donahoe (a widow), arranged auditions for her daughters to travel to places like Germany, Australia, and Portugal if they made the cut, and all three did!! Money was tight in America for the North Side Rogers Park family, especially since Juel's handsome Irish father died suddenly when she was a child.

Well my fast- thinking grandmother had always loved music and maybe she saw a newspaper story about the auditions, and everything happened from there. They were living near St. Gertrude's on the North side. I think it was the Girl Scouts organization which provided free music lessons for the struggling mother of SIX. All 3 girls were Musical. This saved the family from a terrible outcome in the Depression, and even earlier. But it was still a struggle raising all those kids with no spouse and no income. Mary Foster Donahoe, my grandmother, heard about that band called the Ingenues forming, and managed to get auditions for all three girls. Talk about a warrior woman!! Strict requirements and serious talent mandatory! All applicants had to fluently play five or six instruments. They all got in- (my Irish teenaged mother and my two older aunts)..AND grandmother Mary was able to travel with her girls for years since my mother needed a chaperone. What a clever and impressive woman. I never knew her since she died when I was a baby. But grandma was able to take care of and be with her children while they traveled the world.

When Europe and beyond started to succumb to the horrors of the Nazis, the life abroad was over. And the world would never be the same. Only my mother was in the second band, Ina Rae Hutton's Melodears, due to her lasting friendship with Ina, the rarity of female trumpet players, and her availability. Now all 3 Donahoe girls were back in Chicago. The two other aunts settled into marriage/children and careers. My mom Juel, being the youngest, was still able to live life as a musician for a few years in the states, on the Orpheum circuit.

That is until, sadly, women had trouble getting orchestral musician's gigs in the United States. These nice union musician jobs stateside, now seemed to go mostly to men. In fact, in about 1940 Ina Rae Hutton started and all Male orchestra which traveled to gigs in America. The huge 1940 billboard on a State street Chicago Marquee, now vigorously lit with all those light bulbs, now read : "Ina Ray Hutton and her ALL MALE ORCHESTRA". To say my somewhat delicate mother was sad would be a vast understatement. She was now in her 30s with limited job skills...we all know big band music was fading fast-and the music jobs were usually going to men.

The stunning Ina Rae eventually had to leave what she loved and marry. The story goes she was married at least twice and was the victim of physical abuse. Ina, this stunning trail blazer, never had children to keep her company in her California life. She and my mother would reminisce about their experiences, but it was bittersweet for both. Ina's mom was a talented piano player on the south side. But due to segregation, stories claim she didn't feel welcome back home in Chicago due to her mixed race. And her sister and mother who were black, weren't warmly welcomed at the all-white performances. This knowledge will always weigh heavily on me - neither woman had it easy after youth faded. I am, however, so proud of all those early women, and have done what I can to preserve their legacy. See below.

One of the old Hollywood studios, Vitaphone, filmed a few of the performances and they still exist!!! And they're being restored because the film based audio tracks are quite bad. I recently and surprisingly heard from a superbly talented long-time Vitaphone audio expert who still works for the studio. This techie also loves music and is tasked with restoring the audio tracks. He found me somehow after seeing the old photos in the appropriate New York and Chicago libraries (Newberry) and maybe because of my former career as a Chicago radio newscaster and reporter. He knew my mother's pre-marital name was Donahoe, and he confirmed I am her daughter. (Her married name was Zender). This restoration project about my family is a true needle-in-a -haystack discovery-- by a very intelligent audio genius in New York, named Peter Mintun, who just happens to love jazz and the big band era. After seeing the saved band film footage in the Vitaphone collection, and finding the still photos, some of which come from my family scrapbook, which exists on line. This Vitaphone engineer, Peter Mintun is now busy at work restoring the sound tracks!!!!

Given that film is no longer, used in the movie industry (maybe in a rare situation but it's a digital world), it's a bit of a miracle this studio is spending the money to keep the images for posterity. Go mom Juel Donahoe Zender. I hope you are still playing the trumpet and sax and piano etc. somewhere in the universe. I wish you had lived longer. I lost you as a 20-something, and only after your death figured all this out.

I appreciate anyone who took the time to read this long post of my recollections. The saga of these ladies does Chicago's North side proud.

------------------------------------------------ Ginny Zender Feb 22, 2022, 7:15 PM

TO GERRY CLESEN WRITTEN TO HIM TODAY since he adored his mother and was great to me as a child.

______

Gerry, you might know, Brian Donahoe has put the Donahoe-Zender tree all online. I was 'a saver' and kept the pictures in my house. Brian is a double-cousin and has researched both the Donahoe and Zender heritage. And his mom and dad and children etc. He is meticulous about drawing the ancestral trees going back hundreds of years.


I am also very interested in our family of course, preserving the legacy, and reveling in the old photos. Brian added my entire scrapbook and other items, putting it all on the internet for future generations. Recently Peter Mintun - an audio engineer at Vitaphone studio (which still exists!!! today), was tasked with the job of restoring the badly deteriorated Ingenue short film sound tracks. He modestly explained that in the digital age there are very few sound engineers working in film restoration. Fortunately, for so many, he didn't want these old sound tracks to disappear. He is working on digitalizing the sound tracks of the movie shorts. Amazingly, this New Yorker, Peter Mintun, loves the big band music your mother and mine were involved in, and he hoped I was still alive to elaborate, and at least identify several of the women. Of course I was delighted to turn the spotlight on my talented and stunning mother Juel and her two sisters. The Donahoe girls. He found me after spending months in Chicago's Newberry library, and a similar prestigious library in New York City. He had a couple pics I'd never seen.


Written by Virginia Mary Donahoe Zender

(daughter of Juel Gertrude Foster Donahoe, and Wlliam Joseph Zender).


Both of my parents are the youngest children in large families, who survived numerous challenges like the depression and figuring out how to makes ends meet during world War. Bless them all.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/AiQbl0hSR2rwkrNIDGheqqEbL2bkpq9F4r7-5nTxMwkJBNIPuxezfsz7b9Lji_h86-W9_sOOOwa5AIMSTgpkE9YNUQH5yqloeGel_O6r-MlsNNBhr-sstWzq3ecRWLIonWPumlzeATLiDW3kPES7vHqZ8dGRACRVtffgfH9HHzEggElN8DD1O2YDhL6dncTG_vDmYWMbpaI1MygX_SODK5Uq3Lssuj89qjTk9buUHEB7OlmwQFd2zlgOaFMFnqsVSwMXIJeKQPZzjwklrfFb5hGyiImX4OXAx2HAwU4k435goxdUNRlhR4x3Nsic1CW98pSuS7TFJSOvbhDyDxxANY15fS1LK6psXBwRVQZoh3wshxLnPHxh5qWv3kvHSh_dBCiIo0vs-5Iegq-_ViB07wo6ap5a-Y_NxQWtdmgOufhKWAQASi493JwZLSyKV55u6LEB6-soMp2piq9d-3damWcEOrQfw58YuCuw83qVoVkWcUS4ZSPdsB579JsFWIGujJmmE7PLlZLBfPz4nFqHKXhXgCsBo0SIzbEusqRPW92CKk2cC-Zx6wLYDnlqd8556NZYOUHcB5PA57eeuhqeEZ425GZgc9pEsud4o50=w724-h882-no

The Ingenues, an all-girl band and vaudeville act, serenade the cows in the University of Wisconsin, Madison's dairy barn in 1930. The show was apparently part of an experiment to see whether the soothing strains of music boosted the cows' milk production.

Angus B. McVicar/Wisconsin Historical Society

From Ginny Zender on 3/6/2018, regarding the picture above: Dorothy and My Mom serenading cows at the University of Wisconsin (Madison); part of a scientific experiment to determine whether cows at the University dairy farm (which is sill there) would product more milk due to the cow concert! lol. Dorothy has her leg hiked up on some old wooden structure or another, and my mom's head is in the pic, but sadly her face is obscured.

On 11/19/2021, Ginny Zender said about these pictures "some man from New York has been researching the band and the sisters ". She continued when asked about the source: "Patricia told me that Dorothy worked downtown and ran into him somehow. Some lessons may have taken place at Ravinia which was accessible by train. This guy man is also researching another lady group from New York. He's working on "The Vitaphone Project" and helped restore on of the film shorts. Not certain yet if the film short features on our relatives or the other ladies. This is such fantastic new stuff. So happy it will on forever because of you. The guy is out for the night, but you know I will send more when I can. The 2 pictures are great... one of them has all three of them!" About this particular picture: "This is a newspaper clipping he found"

According to Ginny: "And he also sent me a copy of the photo! Pretty cool."

Photo from Cleveland, 1925, when the band featured a young tenor named Johnnie Looze and a Charleston dancer named Helen Knowlton. From Ginny (about her mother Juel in this Picture): "My mother was only 13 at the time. Lord I wonder what she was thinking about her sisters. Mary was only 26! It's one of the youngest pictures of her on the road. I sure miss that lady."

names of the band members

With the Three Stooges

Juel Donahoe (trumpet player) with Ina Ray Hutton and her Melodears

Juel Donahoe (trumpet player) with Ina Ray Hutton and her Melodears