Gertrude Niesen

Gertrude Niesen was an American torch singer, actress, comedian, and songwriter who achieved popular success in musicals and films in the 1930s and 1940s. Niesen began singing as a career in the early 1930s, first appearing (credited as Gertrude Nissen) with Roger Wolfe Kahn and His Orchestra and Artie Shaw in a Vitaphone short film, Yacht Party. On old-time radio, Niesen was the featured singer on The Ex-Lax Big Show and host of The Show Shop, on NBC-Blue. She recorded for Victor, Columbia, and Brunswick in the 1930s, and in 1933 was the first to record the song "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes",…