Ethel Hilda Keeler was born on August 25, 1909, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her lineage was Irish Catholic, and when she was three years old, her family moved to New York City. She was one of six children, and although she expressed an interest in dance at a very early age, the family could not afford to give her lessons. As a child, she attended parochial school on Manhattan’s East Side. One day a week a dance teacher would come to the school and teach to interested students. She saw potential in Ruby and spoke to her mother about taking lessons at her studio. When her mother declined because of a lack of funds, she offered her services free.
In the dance classes she attended, she met another student who told her all about the world of chorus girls. Both girls were thirteen, (three years younger than the legal requirement), but they both lied and went to an audition. This led to a part in George M. Cohan’s “The Rise of Rosie O’ Reilly” (1923), which paid her forty-five dollars a week. She worked at Texas Guinan’s nightclub and met Al Jolson, whom she began dating. They married in 1928; she was 19 years of age, he 42. They adopted a son, but the marriage did not go well and the couple divorced in 1940. She found happiness with a second husband, John Homer Lowe, whom she married in 1941. The couple had four children and their marriage ended with his death from cancer in 1969.
In 1933, Ruby was cast in Daryl F. Zanuck’s musical, “Forty Second Street”, opposite Dick Powell and Bebe Daniels. Busby Berkeley’s lavish choreography made the film an enormous success. Warner Brothers gave her a long-term contract, and cast her in “Gold Diggers of 1933”, and “Dames” (1934). She left show business in 1941, and went on to raise four children. Her two sisters, Helen and Gertrude Keeler, were also actresses. In 1971, she came out of retirement to star in the Broadway revival of “No, No Nanette, which was directed by Busby Berkeley.
Ruby Keeler was the motion picture industry’s very first tap dancing star. She died of cancer on February 28, 1993, at the age of 83. She has a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6730 Hollywood Boulevard.
What are some of YOUR favorite Ruby Keeler performances?