Kathryn Grayson Sing Star of the Golden Age of Hollywood 1922-2010

Ms. Grayson, a coloratura soprano, was best known for three film roles: the movie hopeful who attracts the attentions of two sailors (Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra) on shore leave in Hollywood in Anchors Aweigh (1945); Magnolia Hawks, the captains innocent daughter, who falls for the handsome gambler Gaylord Ravenal (Howard Keel), in the Technicolor remake of Show Boat (1951); and the sophisticated, comically shrewish actress starring in a Shakespearean musical with her ex-husband (Mr. Keel again) in Kiss Me Kate (1953), Hollywoods adaptation of the Broadway hit.

Her screen duets with Mr. Keel included “Make Believe" and “You Are Love" from Show Boat, “So in Love" from Kiss Me Kate and “Lovely to Look At" from the film of the same name. Along with Sinatra, she also introduced movie audiences to “Time After Time."

After her movie career, during which she often played opera stars, she went on to perform in actual operas, primarily in summer theaters. She also toured the country in the 1980s and 90s with a one-woman stage show; in the late 90s, she toured with an old movie co-star, Van Johnson.

In 1996, looking back at her experiences in Hollywood, Ms. Grayson shared her thoughts about the death of American movie musicals with The New York Times. The audience did not change, she said. The studios changed. They wanted to make cheap movies and grab the money and run.

Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick was born on Feb. 9, 1922, in Winston-Salem, N.C., the third child of Charles and Lillian Hedrick. The family moved to Kirkwood, Mo., near St. Louis, where she studied voice and aspired to an opera career. Her parents moved to California, and when she was 15 she was signed by Red Seal, the classical arm of RCA Victor Records. Seen and heard by MGM executives, she was persuaded to abandon her opera ambitions and do her singing in the movies instead.

She made her film debut in the title role in Andy Hardys Private Secretary (1941), opposite Mickey Rooney. This, the seventh full-length feature in the series about wholesome prewar teenagers, gave the 19-year-old Ms. Grayson the opportunity to sing Johann Strausss “Voices of Spring" and the mad-scene aria from Donizettis Lucia di Lammermoor onscreen.

Over the next 15 years she made 20 films, including That Midnight Kiss (1949) and The Toast of New Orleans (1950), both with the tenor Mario Lanza; So This Is Love (1953), a biography of the opera star Grace Moore; It Happened in Brooklyn (1947), a romantic musical in which Sinatra starred as a soldier home from the war; and her disappointing swan song, The Vagabond King (1956), a costume musical set in 15th-century France.