LANE, Leota (1903-1963)

LANE

Posted By: Karon Velau (email)
Date: 12/9/2018 at 15:29:12

Leota Lane (born Leota Belle Mullican)
(October 25, 1903 – July 25, 1963)

Des Moines Tribune, Des Moines, IA, Fri., July 26, 1963, p.11
Death Takes Leota Lane
Leota Lane Day, one of the four harmonizing sisters from Indianola who were the McGuire and Andrews sisters of the vaudeville and big-band era, is dead. The girl who once sang in Indianola Methodist Church choirs and starred in Simpson College musicals died Thursday in Glendale, Cal., hospital following major heart surgery. She was in her late 50’s. The wife of Jerome Day, a Lockheed Aircraft Corp. executive, Leota in recent years had lived on a San Fernando Valley ranch, restricted her singing to the church choir and with her husband collected rock and gems. An Indianola relative said Friday she also had been ill from cancer.
The Lane sisters – Leota, Lola, Rosemary and Priscilla – provided for Iowans a running hometown girl success story for two decades, the 1930’s and ‘40’s. It was Leota whose talent sparked what was to become a kind of legend. The daughter of an Indianola dentist and later postmaster, Dr. L. A. Mullican, Leota when she was 4 sang solos in Indianola Methodist Sunday School programs, at 12 won a first prize in a state music festival. Dr. Mullican and the sister’s mother, now dead, were divorced and the mother took the name of Lane. On a visit to Des Moines in 1930, Leota Lane recalled the start of the sisters’ careers. As a Simpson College senior, on the afternoon of a production of “Pirates of Penzance,” in which she was to sing the lead, Leota slipped off for a trip to Des Moines. In a florist shop she met the ukelele player and singer, Gus Edwards, who was a kind of impresario for young talent. Edwards heard her sing, offered her a chance to tour with his “Ritz Carlton Nights.” Leota accepted on condition that Lola be included in the offer too. Leota sang in Broadway hits, comic opera and summer opera and in 1933 returned to Des Moines as prima donna of a production of “Strike Me Pink” at the RKO Orpheum Theater.
In 1944, during World War II, Leota joined the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) for service with the Army Air Forces. She directed musical programs for the 2nd Air Force at Colorado Springs, Colo. In recent years she had been a soloist and children’s choir director at Toluca Lake Methodist Church in Burbank, CA. She also is survived by her sisters, Lola, now the wife of Robert Hanlon, a missiles expert living in Pacific Palisades, Cal.; Rosemary, also of Pacific Palisades; Priscilla, wife of contractor Joseph Howard, living in Andover, Mass., and Mrs. Martha Edwards, formerly of Des Moines, now of Santa Monica, Cal.