Our Pet, Juliette: ‘outrageous success’
SINGER CHARMED WITH GLITZ, WHOLESOME APPEAL
In 1940, Ivan Ackery, manager of Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre, told big- band leader Dal Richards that he should check out a 13- year- old female singer.
“I said, ‘ Ivan, that’s not the kind of image I want, thank you very much,’” Richards recounted in 2013. “He said, ‘Just listen to her.’ So I listened to her, and she sang, There’ll Always Be an Engl and. This was wartime, and she brought the house down.”
Juliette Sysak began singing with Richards at Vancouver’s top nightspot, the Panorama Roof, atop the Hotel Vancouver. And her career took off.
She would become Canada’s most popular female vocalist in the late 1950s and early ’ 60s, the host of a CBCTV show that had the coveted Saturday night slot after Hockey Night in Canada.
From coast- to- coast- tocoast, she was known as Our Pet, Juliette.
In recent years she lived in quiet retirement in a Vancouver condo. She moved into a care home this year and, on Oct. 26, died at age 91.
“She had no major illnesses,” said her friend, Gordon Boyd. “She just simply slipped away.… It was really very peaceful.”
She was born Juliette Augustina Sysak on Aug. 27, 1926, in St. Vital, Man., and started singing early — at seven, she won a talent contest singing the depression- era ballad, Buddy Can You Spare a Dime?, dressed as a boy.
Her family moved to Vancouver when she was 10. She made so much money singing with Richards that she bought a fur coat to wear to high school.
In 1943- 44, she relocated to Toronto to sing on a national CBC Radio show hosted by Alan Young. After moving back to Vancouver, she appeared on the Burns Chuckwagon radio show with the Rhythm Pals, recording a trio of country and western 78s for Al Reusch’s Aragon label.
Her talent and star quality led to interest from the U. S. via MCA, the giant talent agency and record company. But she opted to stay in Vancouver and marry musician Tony Cavazzi, who became her manager.
In 1 954 s he was approached by American bigband leader Harry James to be his singer for a gig at the Hollywood Palladium. James was a star — Frank Sinatra was one of his old singers. But she turned him down.
“There was lots of glory but no money, and work only on a week- t o- week basis,” said Juliette, who was known for speaking her mind. “I just couldn’t see it.”
She wound up moving to Toronto, where she appeared on the CBC-TV show Holiday Ranch and then Billy O’Connor's Late Show. In 1956 she was given her own show, Juliette, which ran until 1966.
A 1957 Vancouver Province story by Ben Metcalfe, one of the founders of Greenpeace, says that she made $ 450 per week for her TV show, which was sponsored by Player’s Cigarettes. She also did live shows across the country, like a gig at an auto show in Winnipeg that drew 16,700 people to the Winnipeg Arena.
She was known for her dramatic entrances and glitzy gowns, and for the wholesomeness of her show, which she always ended by saying goodnight to her mother back in Vancouver.
“She was a warm lady. You couldn’t help but like her,” legendary Vancouver disc jockey Red Robinson told the CBC.
“She made it at a time when we really didn’t allow stars in the Canadian broadcast system. And yet, she ended up with a show right after the NHL hockey games, and it became an outrageous success.
“Juliette really brought a lot to Canadian culture and it’s gonna be sad not having her around.”
Between 1969 and 1975 she was host of two CBC-TV talk shows, After Noon and Juliette and Friends, as well as the CBC Radio show Talent Scope. She moved back to Vancouver in 1972, but often went back east for work, telling The Vancouver Sun’s George Daacon in 1976, “if you’re not working in Toronto, you’re just not working.”
Her husband Tony developed Alzheimer’s and died in 1988. Several years later, she started dating another former member of the Richards band, Ray Smith, who had become the president of MacMillan Bloedel. They were together for four years before Smith died in 2005.
She was named to the Order of Canada in 1975, and became a member of the B.C. Entertainment Hall of Fame in 1994.
She rarely performed after the 1990s.
“The last time was at the Orpheum,” said Boyd. “She did a Remembrance Day celebration with Dal Richards several years ago.”
Many people asked her why she stopped performing. “Her expression was ‘ that was then, this is now,’ ” said Boyd.
She once admitted that if she had a chance to do it all again, she would have chosen a career in the chorus instead of as a solo star.
“When you’re no longer front and centre, it hurts,” she told CBC talk show host Bob McLean in 1980.
FREUD WROTE THAT MEN DESIRE WOMEN BUT WOMEN DESIRE MEN’S DESIRE OF THEM. I SUPPOSE SO, BUT TO MY MIND, WOMEN ARE MISSING A LOT IF THEY’RE SATISFIED ONLY WITH FLARED NOSTRILS AND HEAVY BREATHING. — AUTHOR JANE JUSKA