Carol Bruce

Carol Bruce was an American band singer Broadway star and film and television actress Bruce began her career as a singer in the late 1930s with Larry Clinton and his band and later sang with Ben Bernies orchestra in 19401941 Bruce made her Broadway debut in Louisiana Purchase with songs by Irving Berlin who discovered her at a nightclub in Newark New Jersey She was the first actress to play the role of Julie in a Broadway production of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein IIs Show Boat since the 1932 Broadway revival Bruce played the role onstage in 1946 and garnered favorable comparisons to Helen Morgan who had originated the role onstage in 1927 and repeated it in both the 1932 revival and the 1936 film Bruce appeared with Abbott and Costello in Keep Em Flying 1941 Her first serious film role was in This Woman Is Mine 1941 She had supporting roles many years later in the films American Gigolo 1980 and Planes Trains and Automobiles After a long career as a singer and in films Bruce is probably bestremembered for her recurring role as the domineering and meddlesome Lillian Mama Carlson mother of the station manager played by Gordon Jump on CBS WKRP in Cincinnati