Closer Weekly

THE ANDREWS SISTERS

THEIR BOOGIE-WOOGIE MUSIC BROUGHT JOY TO AMERICANS DURING WWII, BUT SOUR NOTES BEHIND THE SCENES TORE THE BELOVED TRIO APART

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Behindthe-scenes details of what led to the beloved ’40s singing group’s breakup.

The Andrews Sisters — LaVerne, Maxene and Patty — remembered stepping out on a USO stage in 1945 prepared to entertain 5,000 troops. Before the show could start, an officer handed them a note. “Fellas, you don’t have to go to Japan! The war is over!” Patty crowed. “There was no reaction; [the soldiers] thought it was part of the show,” she recalled. “But my sisters began to cry…and then all hell broke loose!”

In the years surroundin­g World War II, no act embodied American patriotism like the Andrews Sisters, who recorded star-spangled hits like “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” sold over 80 million records and toured constantly to bolster U.S. servicemen. “They were the voice of mom and apple pie,” Lynda Wells, Maxene’s adopted daughter, tells Closer. But no amount of success or even being named the “Sweetheart­s of Armed Forces Radio Service” made the sisters happy. At the height of their fame, ambition and petty squabbles tore them apart.

LaVerne, the eldest, taught her sisters to harmonize with her as children. “Sometimes there’s a harmonic line, a blend, with siblings that can’t be matched,” notes Wells. After years on the vaudeville circuit, they scored an unlikely hit in 1937 with “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön,” a Yiddish love song translated into English. Over the next years, The Andrews Sisters’ harmonies rewarded them with more hit songs like “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me)” and “ShooShoo Baby.” They recorded with Bing Crosby,

“We represente­d something overseas and at home – a sort of security.” — Patty

performed with big bands like Glenn Miller and appeared in 16 movies.

But as the war ended, their fortunes turned. Patty married their pianist, Walter Weschler, after her first husband, agent Martin Melcher, left her for Doris Day. “That’s when a lot of the trouble started,” says John Sforza, author of Swing It! The Andrews Sisters Story. “Maxene use to say that Weschler never liked her and LaVerne.” When he became the group’s manager, he demanded that Patty, as lead singer, be paid more and pushed his wife to go solo.

She did in 1953, but didn’t tell her sisters, who found out in the press. The following year at Christmas, Maxene overdosed on 18 sleeping pills, which LaVerne called a mistake. Meanwhile, the rift with Patty grew when she sued for a bigger piece of their parents’ estate. “LaVerne and Maxene became ill as a result of all this,” says Wells, who believes heartbreak contribute­d to LaVerne’s cancer death in 1967 and the heart attack that killed Maxene in 1995.

Before Maxene’s passing, Patty visited her in the hospital where their sisterly bond remained intact despite everything. “Every time I was with them without Mr. Weschler, they’d hold hands and tell stories and laugh,” recalls Wells. “I just never saw so much beautiful love.”

The Andrews Sisters legacy also survives in their music and the joy they brought to Americans in dark times. “They were remarkable,” says Bette Midler, who covered “Bugle Boy” in 1972. “Everything they did for our nation was more than we could have asked for.”

— Louise A. Barile, with reporting by Amanda

Champagne-Meadows

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 ??  ?? From left:Patty, Maxene andLaVerne Andrews in1942 The sisters sang “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” in 1941’s Buck Privatesst­arring Abbott and Costello.
From left:Patty, Maxene andLaVerne Andrews in1942 The sisters sang “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” in 1941’s Buck Privatesst­arring Abbott and Costello.

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