Songbird Juliette had star quality
In 1940, Orpheum Theatre manager Ivan Ackery 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 England. 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 CBC-TV show that had the coveted Saturday night slot after Hockey Night in Canada.
From coast to coast to coast, she was known as Our Pet, Juliette.
In recent years she had been living in quiet retirement in a South Granville condo. This spring she moved into a care home, and Oct. 26, died at age 91.
“She had no major illnesses,” said her friend, Gordon Boyd. “She just simply slipped away Thursday night. It was really very peaceful.”
She was born Juliette Augustina Sysak on Aug. 26, 1927, 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 and she grew up in Kitsilano. 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 1954 she was approached by American big-band 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 weekto-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 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 with a song to her mother back in Vancouver.
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.”
Sadly, 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.
A celebration of her life will be held at a later date. For information, email ourpetjuliette@gmail. com.