RUBY KEELER, FAMED DANCER OF 1930S FILMS, DIES AT 83

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 1, 1993                   TAG: 9303010057
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/3   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES                                LENGTH: Short
RUBY KEELER, FAMED DANCER OF 1930S FILMS, DIES AT 83
Ruby Keeler, the winsome dancer who tapped her way through a string of glittering Warner Bros. musicals in the 1930s, died Sunday. She was 83.
She died at 12:40 a.m. at her home in Rancho Mirage, said her son, John Lowe. She had suffered from cancer, he said.
Keeler made her film debut in the 1933 hit "42nd Street," in which she played a chorus girl who went onstage for the ailing star with the prediction by director Warner Baxter: "You're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star." The story was later made into a Broadway musical.
She went on to star in eight more musicals, usually as the wide-eyed Broadway newcomer who falls in love with the buoyant tenor, Dick Powell. Asked for her favorite movie, she once replied, "Gee, I don't remember, they were all so much alike."
In 1941, Keeler made her last film, "Sweetheart of the Campus": "It was so bad I had no regrets about quitting."
Her marriage to entertainer Al Jolson over, she married developer John Lowe and had four children: Teresa, Christine, John and Kathleen. In 1971 she made a spectacular return to Broadway, hoofing in a revival of "No, No, Nanette."
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB