Jane Fischer

Jane Fischer was born on March 8, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. She studied ballet as a child and made her debut with the St. Louis Light Opera. In the spring of 1947, at the age of nineteen, she moved to New York and was an instant success, first dancing in the four-times-a-day ballet segment at The Radio City Music Hall, and then she was booked to dance in the now classic ballet movie The Red Shoes (1948) which required her to travel to England. By November of 1947 she was on Broadway in Oklahoma! (March 31 1943-May 29 1948), then in its' fifth year. Jane became the last dancer in the original run to play Sylvie, The Girl Who Falls Down, a role that had made Joan McCracken a star on opening night. In 1948, after touring in the national company of Oklahoma! for several months, it was back to New York and the stage, plus appearances on television which led to opportunities in Hollywood. Early television shows Stop the Music (1950) and The Colgate Comedy Hour (1950) benefited from her talents, then it was on to the movies. Jane had dancing roles as one of Debbie Reynolds six sisters in Athena (1954), a bridesmaid in Brigadoon (1954) and a twelve-year-old "Goon Girl" in the movie Oklahoma! (1955). It was while filming Oklahoma! that Jane married her first husband, the composer Sammy Fain, whom she had met in 1951 when she appeared in a short-lived Broadway show called Flahooley for which Fain had written the music. The union lasted two-and-a-half years and she married Robert "Bob" Fenton shortly after her divorce in 1957. Her stage career ended on a high in the smash hit Happy Hunting (Dec 6 1956 - Nov 30 1957) starring Ethel Merman. After the birth of two children Jane went to work in the early sixties at the William Morris Talent Agency in New York but soon found herself cast in commercials, a career turn that lasted until 1966 when she and her husband bought the Top 40 radio station KFIV in Modesto, California and re-located to that city. Their company Kilibro Broadcasting Corporation eventually had a number of AM and FM stations, mostly in central California, for which Jane was the social coordinator organizing station-sponsored events. Jane had three daughters with Fenton - Lindsay (b. 1958), Brooke (b. 1960 - d. 1989) and Kimberley (b. 1964). Life in Modesto revolved around family, the radio stations, and civic activities that culminated in Jane being appointed to the Modesto Culture Commission in 1999. Her life drew peacefully to a close on September 5, 2018 while in hospice care in Hughson, California, at the age of 90.