Biography

Although known primarily as the lead singer on the long-running TV show, Your Hit Parade (1950), Dorothy Collins was also featured on the TV show, Candid Camera (1960), where she displayed a lively flair for comedy. Her best work, however, was in the musical theater, where she starred in the original cast of what has become a legendary Broadway musical, Stephen Sondheim's "Follies". For her work, she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 1971, losing the award to her cast mate Alexis Smith. Her work in various musical programs on television in addition to Your Hit Parade (1950) showed her to be one of the finest vocalists of her era. She and her first husband, Raymond Scott, had their own record label; Collins surprised her fans with a number of critically-well-received jazz performances. She also was quite successful with night club engagements.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: audhep <wwmd@erols.com>

Dorothy Collins is one of the most unappreciated and underrated singers in pop music. Like the legendary but also vastly underrated Doris Day, Dorothy did everything so well that she was greatly undervalued. As the star of Your Hit Parade (1950), she was called upon to sings all types of songs, and she was always a delight, even when some of the songs were not. The records she released with her then-husband Raymond Scott on their own label showed what a great flair she had for jazz, especially "No One--Not Even You" and a wonderful version of "Tweedlee Dee". Theatre-goers who were lucky enough to see her in the original cast of Stephen Sondheim's superb "Follies" saw possibly the best female performance in Broadway history. Sondheim himself adored her and said that her version of "Losing My Mind" should be studied as a how-to-do-it lesson in singing. She was nominated for a Tony award which she SHOULD have won and WOULD have won if she had been a leggy redhead in a fabulous red dress like her cast-mate Alexis Smith, who did a great job of concealing the fact that she had a far less substantial role. Smith herself later told Collins after seeing her in "Follies" in its Los Angeles run that she had never realized how brilliant Collins was. Unfortunately, very little of Collins' work has survived - a few kine scopes of her work on Your Hit Parade (1950), pathetically few of her not-too-many recordings and the wonderful original Broadway cast album of "Follies". Once you hear her sing "Losing My Mind", you will have heard the definitive version. What a tragedy that she didn't appear on records, on TV and in the theatre more than she did. As a bonus - she was widely reported to be just like her image - extremely friendly, nice, considerate, and possessing a terrific sense of humor. To those who knew her and her work, she is a greatly missed treasure.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: wwmd38@switchol.com