Solid Potato Salad

 

 

 

A quickie for a Sunday evening. 

 

The Ross sisters were a novelty act who made, as far as I can tell, only one appearance on the the big screen – in an otherwise forgettable MGM musical from 1944 called Broadway Rhythm – starring George Murphy and Ginny Simms.

 

Other cast members included Charles Winninger, Gloria DeHaven, Lena Horne, Nancy Walker, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, and Ben Blue, and Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra.

 

The plot doesn’t really matter, suffice to know that George Murphy wants to put on a show, and that gives him the opportunity to audition a number of acts.

 

The Ross Sisters are listed as a Dance Specialty act, and that doesn’t begin to describe it.  

 

At first, they sound like a rip-off of the Andrews Sisters doing a hep tune called Solid Potato Salad . . . but give it your full attention for the entire 3:50. 

 

The Andrews Sisters never dreamed of doing an act like this!

 

 

 

While they are billed as Aggie, Maggie and Elmira Ross, their real-life names were actually Vicki, Dixie and Betsy Ross. 

 

There is an amazing lack of information about this trio online.  Hard to figure, really.  

 

But Novelty acts were like that sometimes. 

 

No matter how spectacular, once they’d been seen nationally . . . producers were bound to ask . . . “That was great, but what else can you do?”