Georgie Price joined The Lambs in 1954 as a Professional Member after nearly five decades working in show business. He was a child star and teenage Vaudeville headliner. He graduated to Broadway, radio, film, and TV. He was a stockbroker and helped manage his Vaudeville friends’ money. In 1940, Price was a founder and president of AGVA (American Guild of Variety Artists).
George Edward Price was born January 5, 1901, in Manhattan to Harrison B. and Pauline Price, née Singer. It was a family of eleven, and Price said his mother missed work as a cleaning lady the day he was born. The whole family was evicted, with the landlord carrying out the bed with him and his mother still in it.
When he was five years old, a man paid him a dime to sing in a nickelodeon. The boy sang an impromptu ditty on-key. Liking the limelight and the silver, he went back the next day and asked for a job: He wanted ten cents to lead community singing and draw in patrons. His parents hauled him off to first grade. However, just two years later, he landed in a kiddie revue with Gus Edwards called “School Days.” Also in the cast of kids were Eddie Cantor, George Jessel, and Walter Winchell. They would become Price’s lifelong friends. In his childhood circle of friends in the 1910s were Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, and Harry Richman. Price said when he met the legendary Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, the star offered to adopt him.
Price claimed he earned more than $1 million before he turned nineteen (about $16 million today) from performances. He headlined for 53 weeks at the Palace. In the 1920s he signed with RCA Victor, recording “Morning Will Come” (1923), “Barney Google” (1923), “California, Here I Come” (1924) and “Isn’t She the Sweetest Thing?” (1925). Price’s signature song, performed in countless clubs and stages, was the 1926 standard “Bye Bye Blackbird” by composer Ray Henderson and lyricist Mort Dixon:
Pack up all my cares and woe
Here I go, singing low
Bye bye, blackbird
Where somebody waits for me
Sugar’s sweet, so is she
Bye bye, blackbird
He had a few Broadway roles, following his 1922 debut dancing and singing in “Spice of Life” at the Winter Garden. He spent the Roaring Twenties touring across the U.S. and Europe as a song and dance man. A legend tied to Price is about the time he was finding it hard to get work and he bribed an elevator operator. He went to the offices of Lee and J.J. Shubert, and talked the elevator operator out of his uniform. Price then waited for one of the brothers to get in, and he trapped him between floors and made him watch his act. It worked and he signed a contract. Price was often mixed up with Jolson, the biggest star of the era, and the Shuberts booked him to replace Jolson. He took his comedy to radio and in 1933 a poll voted him the most popular radio comedian of the year.
After Vaudeville ended, it was the Depression, and Price put show business aside and gained a seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1934. He channeled his energies as a stockbroker and adviser, reaching out to his entertainment friends in his new firm, Price and Davis. Price helped his old Vaudeville pals shore up their finances and invest in their future. This brought him into contact with more of the business side of show business, which in 1940 led to the founding of AGVA. Price served as president during the early years. He took occasional club dates and was emcee for benefit shows.
Price was married three times. In the early 1960s Price moved into the Lambs’ Clubhouse, 130 West 44th Street, after his third divorce. He was close to another Lamb who was a longtime resident of the Club, Bert Wheeler. Only a week before his sudden death, on the occasion of the Kentucky Derby, The Lambs held “Georgie Price Derby Day” and the star sang Jolson’s “April Showers.”
On May 10, 1964, Georgie Price died of heart disease surrounded by friends. Price was with his old co-star Lila “Cuddles” Lee when he passed at her home, 209 East 66th Street. He was 63 years old. He is interred in Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. The plot is beside his friend, Judy Holliday.
–Researched and written by Shepherd Kevin C. Fitzpatrick