Music: Juke-Box Divas

Three singing sisters from Minneapolis made another 2¢ last week. The Andrews Sisters had sold the 8,000,000th of the discs for which Decca Records pays them 2¢ apiece. The Andrews girls are the first sister act to owe fame & fortune to the juke box alone.

They sing in harmony which is not merely close but adhesive. Tall, dark La-Verne, 25, is a sort of baritone, and the one who worries about getting places on time. Tomboy Maxene, 23, a soprano of sorts, handles the Andrews checkbook. Blonde, merry Patty, 22, likes to clown, says: “I’m happy because I got no brains. Say, I don’t know from nothing.”

When Patty was eleven the sisters got in smalltime vaudeville, stayed there until an agent named Lou Levy heard them, taught them a bouncy, Bronxy song. Bei Mir Bist Du Schön. The sisters recorded it for Decca, clicked at once. Since then Manager Levy has picked all their songs, sweet ones as well as cute ones like Beer Barrel Polka, I, Yi, Yi, Yi, Yi, and Well All Right.

Only one Andrews sister (LaVerne) reads music. The girls work up a number with Arranger Vic Schoen, in rehearsals in which he holds his nose and they sneer. Once they took singing lessons, but apoplectic Manager Levy stopped that, pronto, for fear they would be ruined. The sisters have also appeared in four movies, one of which, Argentina Nights, so infuriated Argentine audiences that it had to be withdrawn. The Harvard Lampoon voted this performance the “most frightening” of the year.

The Andrews sisters make $5,000 a week but have no delusions of grandeur.