“Where are you going now?” Elvis asked.
Judy Tyler, his co-star in Jailhouse Rock until just a few days earlier before filming was wrapped up, had an easy answer. After a whirlwind three months in Hollywood where she filmed two movies and one television show, Tyler was eager to return to New York City where she and her husband of less than four months had rented an apartment.
Elvis understood. He had a new place, too, a mansion on 14 acres south of Memphis that his parents had found and plunked down a $1,000 down payment to seal the $102,000 purchase from a professor of urology at the University of Tennessee. As Elvis boarded a train for his new digs, Tyler and husband Greg LaFayette loaded their suitcases in the trunk of their new 1957 Chevy, put the poodle and cat they had bought as gifts for Tyler’s agent in the back seat and headed east on a leisurely course along the Lincoln Highway.
In the early evening hours of July 3, 1957, they drove through Medicine Bow, Wyoming, and past the world’s oldest building, a cabin built of 5,800 dinosaur bones resurrected from the fossil-rich dinosaur trove of nearby Como Bluff. They were also within view of Medicine Bow Peak, where 66 souls perished less than two years earlier in the country’s worst civilian aviation disaster to that time.
As they approached Rock River, Wyoming, a car leaving a curio store pulled in front of Tyler’s car prompting LaFayette to swerve into the oncoming traffic lane where their car was struck broadside. Tyler was killed immediately; LaFayette died the next morning. She was 24 years old.
*****
Judy Tyler was genetically obliged to pursue a career in show business. Her father, Julian Hess, played the trumpet in the bands of Paul Whiteman and Benny Goodman before embarking on a career as a building contractor. Her mother, Lorelei Kendler, had been a Ziegfeld Follies dancer before marrying.
Tyler, who was born Judith Mae Hess on Oct. 9, 1932, studied ballet, music and acting as a youngster before attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City where Anne Bancroft, John Cassavettes, Vince Edwards and Grace Kelly were classmates.
As a teenager she modeled for the Harry Conover Agency, where she was named “Miss Stardust.” Conover also suggested the surname change from Hess to Tyler and provided training in working on radio and television as one of the Conover “Cover Girls.”
Before her 18th birthday, Tyler had landed a spot as a dancer in the Copacabana chorus line and was given an occasional opportunity to sing. Copa pianist Colin Romoff recognized her vocal talent and became her vocal coach. On Dec. 29, 1950 — two months after meeting — the 26-year-old Romoff and Tyler were married.
Tyler kept busy in the New York area — singing at night clubs like the Mocambo, the Riviera and Le Ruban Bleu and making TV appearances with Bob Hope, Milton Berle and Sid Caesar — before getting her big break with NBC.
Despite her diverse experience, Tyler was ill-prepared for her first steady network gig. She entered Doodyland — the province ruled by kiddie TV’s first superstar, Howdy Doody (and inhabited by the oddest set of characters yet assembled by the young medium) — in 1952.
Howdy was the center of the show, but it was the rest of the cast that made it memorable. Howdy, a freckle-faced marionette of dubious intelligence, proved a likable straight man to the likes of Phineas T. Bluster, Inspector John J. Fadoozel, Cornelius Cobb and Howdy’s sister, Heidi Doody. There were Goofy-like regulars like Dilly Dally and Flub-a-Dub as well as human characters like Chief Thunderthud and Clarabell (a mute clown portrayed by future Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keeshan).
The show was clearly geared towards youngsters in the lower elementary grades. Those who were lucky enough to score tickets to the actual show (there was a two-year waiting list), found themselves sentenced to 30 minutes of uncomfortable seating in Doodyville’s Peanut Gallery.
But there also were adult shenanigans going on behind the scenes. Much of the NBC complex shut down so employees could catch the often X-rated rehearsals for the show. Puppeteers found that those kid-friendly marionettes could also be maneuvered into hysterically funny compromising positions. Writer Dayton Allen, who was well-known for groping women on the set, extended that courtesy to Howdy, who was once retrofitted with a puppet-sized package of wooden genitalia. Peanut Gallery mothers were often propositioned, sometimes successfully.
When Tyler was added to the cast as an Indian princess, it satisfied more than the tykes who tuned in on Saturday morning.
“We got her to appeal to the little girls,” said producer Roger Muir. “Well, she appealed to the little girls and the big daddies, too.”[1]
Prior to Tyler’s arrival, Princess SummerFallWinterSpring was just one of the many marionettes used on the program. But, beginning in 1952 and for the next three years, a puff of smoke heralded the character’s transformation into a flesh and blood version of a true Tinka Tonka tribal maiden, complete with braided hair and headband.
Tyler’s following extended well beyond the TV audience. Her appearances at supermarket openings around the country guaranteed large crowds.
“There were lots of stories about the road trips and Judy and lots and lots of guys,” said Bob Rippen, a director for the show. “Once in a nightclub in Kansas City she ended up drunk and standing on a table and said something that would have been very, very bad for a kids’ show. We pulled strings to keep it out of the paper.”[2]
Howard Davis, a scriptwriter and occasional director for the show, conceded that Tyler had “round heels” but added: “Had she lived, she would have been a major star.”[3]
Others agreed with Davis’ assessment. Garry Moore ranked Tyler among “Television’s Own Promising Starlets” for TV Guide in 1955. Reginald Hammerstein, brother of composer Oscar, spotted her on TV and recommended her for a new musical in the works by Rodgers & Hammerstein.
Although Tyler did, indeed, land a major part in the musical, Pipe Dream, the production appeared to be jinxed from its inception.
Cy Feuer and Ernie Martin, fresh off their success with Guys and Dolls, had persuaded John Steinbeck to write a follow-up novel to Cannery Row with the intent of turning it into a Broadway musical. Thus, Steinbeck produced the novel Sweet Thursday, which received lukewarm reviews. When songwriter Frank Loesser was unavailable to compose the score for a musical, Feuer & Martin turned the project over to Rodgers & Hammerstein, who were hoping to rebound from 1953’s Me & Juliet, a relative failure for the duo.
Rodgers & Hammerstein were a bit squeamish about taking over a project mostly set in a whorehouse, but hoped to offset the storyline with a powerhouse cast. For the lead character, the house’s madame, they picked Helen Traubel, an operatic diva with little acting experience. They wanted Henry Fonda for the male lead but, after six months of vocal training, they couldn’t get Henry to carry a tune so settled on veteran stage actor William Johnson. For the key character of prostitute Suzy, they first sought out Julie Andrews (recently contracted to My Fair Lady) then Janet Leigh, who also was unavailable, before settling on Tyler.
In preparation for her Broadway debut, Tyler spent part of the summer of 1955 co-starring in Annie Get Your Gun at the Warwick, R.I., Musical Theater.
During rehearsals for the Nov. 30, 1955, opening at the Schubert Theater in New York City, Rodgers & Hammerstein tinkered with the screenplay, writing new songs as they went. By the time they finished, the whorehouse had been reduced to a boarding house, prostitute Suzy was merely a boarder and Steinbeck was pissed, complaining to Hammerstein: "You've turned my prostitute into a visiting nurse!"[4]
Although the musical set a Broadway record with $1.2 million in advance sales, it received mixed reviews and closed after 245 performances. It did receive nine Tony nominations, including one for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a musical for Tyler. The exposure also netted Tyler a cover story in Life magazine where she was featured with other up-and-coming actresses (like Jayne Mansfield and Susan Strasberg).
However well her professional life was going, Tyler’s personal life was crumbling. Not long after divorcing Romoff in 1956, she wed again — this time to 19-year-old aspiring actor Gregory LaFayette on St. Patrick’s Day 1957— at the Balmoral Hotel in Miami with singer Patti Page as her matron of honor. After a brief stop to set up their Manhattan apartment, the newlyweds headed to Hollywood to pursue movie careers.
It didn’t take long for the pair to find work. Tyler was cast as a singer in Bop Girl Goes Calypso, one of those exploitive quickie films cranked out in the early rock & roll era. LaFayette landed a decent part in a war picture, Under Fire. Tyler also found time to play the part of a stripper in an early episode of the Perry Mason TV series entitled “The Case of the Fan Dancer’s Horse.”
But Tyler’s biggest break came when she was cast as Elvis Presley’s love interest in his third film, Jailhouse Rock. Despite her second billing, Tyler didn’t play a major part in the filming, but Elvis, who was developing a reputation for being romantically involved with his co-stars, took a liking to her.
Whether the two actually had a romantic liaison is in doubt, but LaFayette may have suspected something was afoot. His behavior on set was apparently so disruptive, that he was banned by the film’s producers.
Although Tyler drew good reviews for her work with Elvis and on the Perry Mason project, she never read them since all her Hollywood work was released after her death. It was reported that Elvis was so shaken up by her death that he initially refused to watch Jailhouse Rock.
Although LaFayette was buried in his hometown of Hopewell Junction, N.Y., Tyler was cremated and her ashes were interred in the tony Ferncliff Mauseleum in Hartsdale, N.Y., where she counts among her neighbors Basil Rathbone, Ed Sullivan, Paul Robeson and Toots Shor.
In 1959, a Washington rockabilly singer named Kenny Baker recorded a tribute to Tyler, Goodbye Little Star:

[1] The Box, Penguin: 1995, Jeff Kisseloff, p. 450.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Rodgers & Hammerstein, Harry N. Abrams: 1992, Ethan Mordden, p. 174.
Judith Mae Hess (Tyler), actress
Born: October 9, 1932
Died: July 3, 1957 (age 24)
Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand -- Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.
Comments