04/06/2023
Selling It: Al Shayne © by Chris Barry
Vocalist Al Shayne knew how to put over a tune - and a hustle. An emotive balladeer with a pronounced style, Shayne achieved fame for his work in records, broadcasting, vaudeville and night clubs, mainly in the New York City area. His unlawful business practices made national news, and kept him in the headlines long after his heyday as "Radio's Ambassador of Song."
Not to be confused with the vaudeville comic of the same name*, Al Shayne was the oldest of four children born to Philip Shanes and Julia Smolens, both from Vilna, a region of the then Russian empire with a history of changing borders, now comprising Lithuania, Belarus, Poland and Russia. Alex Schanes, later known as Albert Harold Shayne, was born in Vilna in 1894**. The family moved first to England, where Al's brother Louis (Lazarus) was born in 1900, then to the US about 1902.
It appears Shayne dipped in and out of show business early on. He was working as an actor and associated with theatrical agent Max Rogers in 1918, but working as a dress salesman in 1920. He identified himself as a "general merchandise broker and salesman" in 1924. The following year he partnered with Billy Wolfson and songwriters Sidney Clare and Lew Brown to open a night spot, the Melody Club, at 114 West 54th Street, Manhattan, and Shayne performed and emceed there.
Advertising the Melody Club was easy. There was already a sizeable mailing list at hand from the "general merchandise" Al was selling. That list also provided a wealth of potential witnesses for authorities who accused Al, his brother Louis and others of conspiracy to violate Prohibition law, for running an elaborate mail-order bootlegging scheme. As if using a government agency - the US Postal Service - to deliver illegal liquor were not brazen enough, the syndicate apparently continued operating even after a federal grand jury issued indictments. Al initially pleaded not guilty, but on 2 March 1926, he changed his plea to guilty. He and his brother Louis were sentenced to a year-and-a-day in prison.
After his "retirement," as Variety put it, was over, Shayne was a free man by March 1927, and he bought a 50-percent stake in the Pelham Heath Inn and headlined there, backed by Bud Rice's Original Kentucky Night Hawks (Trumpeter Jack Purvis played with this group the year before). Praising Shayne's "palpable personal draw," Variety's Abel Green wrote "His personal song salesmanship is his biggest stock in trade, and he sells it very satisfactorily."
Shayne made a trip to England in 1929 and used it as a self-marketing tool upon his return. Between 1928 and 1931, he was making records, for Harmony, Columbia, Brunswick, Vocalion and Crown. He showcased a good vocal range and an emotional crack in his voice. He made about a half dozen sides for Crown. The movie trades in 1930 reported Shayne was president of the Checker Music Corp., which was seeking to market 33 1/3 rpm recordings of music and ads to theaters. Shayne also appeared in the 1931 Vitaphone short "The Musical Mystery" and provides an off-camera vocal for a 1935 film "The Old Prospector Talks."
In the 1930s, Shayne settled into working the vaudeville and night club scene and mainly local radio in New York, including a long stint on WMCA, partnering with fellow Crown artist Jerry Baker, much of the time with the same sponsor, Sally's Fur Studio. Sally's followed Shayne when he moved to WOR. A 1935 review in Variety of Shayne's half-hour show with Nat Brusiloff's Orchestra on WOR calls Shayne "a baritone whose singular style of batting out the lyrics of a pop composition has won him favor in the metropolitan area. Shayne may go short on interpretive nuances, but by the time he's through with a number the listeners have a pretty good idea of what the lyrics are about." Shayne's radio theme was "Wonderful One." Shayne seemed to find ample work despite the Depression, but busy as he was, he sought relief from creditors in federal court in February 1934, the first of at least three bankruptcy filings in his work life.
One of Shayne's stage appearances at Loew's State in New York in 1936 sparked a double-edged review. The Billboard judged that he had "a nice voice, one that's easy on the ears and has a lot of charm about it," but "he's in a bad way on his bows, very obviously a milker. He'd get the big hand anyway." Shayne closed out the '30s with a 15-minute sustaining program on WHN, backed by Dick Ballou's orchestra.
By early 1939, while still performing, Shayne was working as a stock broker - with a modified first name. Alfred Shayne & Company, Inc. advertised a 7% yield on stocks selling for under $10. In September 1940, three months after leasing a penthouse apartment at 65 Central Park West in Manhattan, Al filed for bankruptcy. Variety (09/11/1940) reported that his creditors included music publisher Lester Santly, the William Morris Agency, and others who'd loaned him money. Variety adds "Shayne recently opened a radio and voice school."
The Billboard's Paul Denis reviewed Shayne's show at the Aquarium Restaurant at 711 7th Avenue, New York in November 1942, and wrote Shayne "is still a good singer and knows how to make the lyrics count." Variety said Shayne was "still a master song-seller" with "nice showmanship." In the summer of 1943, Shayne was producing revues at the Hotel Nemerson in the Catskills resort region of New York.
He had a regular singing gig on WINS in the mid 1940s, but in 1945 Shayne went all in on running a costume jewelry manufacturing business at 298 5th Avenue. Shayne put out want ads for assemblers, solderers, a shipping clerk and bookkeeper/stenographer. But the firm was forced into a sheriff's sale the following year.
Although the press began referring to Al as a "former singer," he did team up again with Jerry Baker for club dates in Queens in 1948. Around this time, investment counseling seems to have taken more of Shayne's time.
In 1951, Alfred Shayne and his youngest brother Irving were among those named by the Securities & Exchange Commission as the reason the agency revoked the registration of a brokerage firm, for its violations of anti-fraud provisions. In 1957, Shayne was acquitted of federal charges in a stock swindle involving a Montana mining company.
A federal judge sentenced Shayne to a year in prison in 1961 for income tax evasion. U.S. District Judge Alexander Bicks blasted Shayne for his past dealings; he is quoted as saying "Everybody who ever had any business with him was trimmed," and "This wasn't some babe in the woods. Do you know what his business was? Selling a sucker list." Bicks said he did not impose a harsher sentence because multiple people in the theatrical community wrote letters on Shayne's behalf.
In 1964, a federal grand jury indicted Shayne and seven other men on stock and mail fraud charges, for allegedly selling $400,000 in worthless shares in an Oklahoma oil company. Shayne pleaded not guilty, but two years later changed his plea to guilty. Asking for leniency in court, he's quoted as saying "I've learned a very, very bitter lesson - bitter with a capital B." But U.S. District Judge Joseph Blumenfeld interrupted: "But you've been in prison before," he's quoted as saying, "You only got out in 1961 - five years ago. Didn't you learn a lesson that time?" Shayne received a three-year sentence, suspended because of his age (71-ish), and he was put on probation for three years. "And if you ever come before me again," the judge said, "it won't make any difference how old you are. You're going to be sent away."
In August 1967, Shayne took out an ad in Variety seeking "Gay Nineties Talent" for a "steady engagement in out-of-town night club." Later that month, the press reported that Shayne was making another comeback to show business, with a club date in Washington, DC. No follow-up reporting on the gig has been found, and if Shayne continued performing, it's not well documented.
Shayne and Estelle Segale of Philadelphia took out a marriage license in Easton, Pennsylvania in March 1925, but it's not known if the couple followed through. Shayne married actress Dorothy Clyde in New York 5 March 1926, three days after his first federal guilty plea. Columnist Walter Winchell tattled Shayne's purported romances; he termed model Cecile Clancy Shayne's "secret bride" in 1932.
10 years later, while Shayne was in his late 40s, he married Broadway dancer Rhonda Joyce Segal, a.k.a. Ronda Gale, who was about 22. In addition to raising their two children, Ronda worked as a beautician, running the salon at Macy's for a time and founding the Beauty Visiting Service Club, a house-call service. Al Shayne died in September 1975. Ronda died 9 Nov. 1988.
_____
NOTE:
* The two Al Shaynes were not related. Comic Al Shayne (1885-1969) used billing that was both tongue-in-cheek and self-deprecating: "The Singing Beauty" and "The Adonis of Vaudeville." For a time he worked with a partner, Bob Matthews. The two Als' career timelines began to intersect during World War One, but while comic Al traveled the country's vaudeville circuits and worked consistently on stage from about 1905 to 1925, vocalist Al was not a headliner early on, and worked mainly in New York throughout his career. Illness seems to have forced comic Al to give up performing in August 1925, so any potential confusion over "who's who" in the trades ends then.
** Singer Al Shayne gave his birthdate as 6 Aug. 1895 and 6 Aug. 1896; his father's naturalization petition gives Al's birthdate as 5 Dec. 1894. The 1901 Census of England, conducted in March, lists Al as age 6.
