page_title: Marion Harris
section_title: Later career and death
hierarchical_section_title: Marion Harris / Later career and death
caption_attribution_description: Marion Harris, reclining, with banjo ukulele
context_page_description: Marion Harris was an American popular singer who was most successful in the 1920s. She was the first widely known white singer to sing jazz and blues songs.
context_section_description: Between 1931 and 1933, Harris performed on such NBC radio shows as The Ipana Troubadors and Rudy Vallee's The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour. She was billed by NBC as "The Little Girl with the Big Voice."
  In early 1931 she performed in London, returning for long engagements at the Café de Paris. In London she appeared in the musical Ever Green and broadcast on BBC radio. She also recorded in England in the early 1930s but retired soon afterwards. In 1936, she married Leonard Urry, an English theatrical agent. Their house was destroyed in a German rocket attack in 1941, and in 1944 she travelled to New York to seek treatment for a neurological disorder. She was discharged two months later.
  She died on April 23, 1944, nineteen days after her 48th birthday, in a hotel fire that started when she fell asleep while smoking in bed.
caption: Harris with banjo uke
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