London's 35-year acting career began in films in 1944 and included playing opposite Gary Cooper in Man of the West (1958) and Robert Mitchum in The Wonderful Country (1959). She achieved continuing success in the TV medical drama Emergency! (1972–1979), co-starring her real-life husband, Bobby Troup, and produced by her ex-husband, Jack Webb, in which London played the female lead role of nurse Dixie McCall. She and Randolph Mantooth, who played one-half of her medical students, a paramedic, in the series, were very close to her family, until her death in 2000.
Born in Santa Rosa, California, she was the daughter of Jack and Josephine Peck, who were a vaudeville song-and-dance team. When she was fourteen the family moved to Los Angeles. Shortly after that, she began appearing in movies. She graduated from the Hollywood Professional High School in 1945.
London began singing under the name Gayle Peck in public in her teens before appearing in a film. She was discovered by talent agent Sue Carol (wife of actor Alan Ladd), while working as an elevator operator. Her early film career, however, did not include any singing roles.
London recorded 32 albums in a career that began in 1955 with a live performance at the 881 Club in Los Angeles. Billboard named her the most popular female vocalist for 1955, 1956, and 1957. She was the subject of a 1957 Life cover article in which she was quoted as saying, "It's only a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of oversmoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate."
London's debut recordings were for the Bethlehem Records label. While shopping for a record deal, she recorded four tracks that would later be included on the compilation album Bethlehem's Girlfriends in 1955. Bobby Troup backed London on the album, for which London recorded the standards "Don't Worry About Me", "Motherless Child", "A Foggy Day", and "You're Blasé".
London's most famous single, "Cry Me a River", was written by her high-school classmate Arthur Hamilton and produced by Troup. The recording became a million-seller after its release in December 1955 and also sold on reissue in April 1983 from the attention brought by a Mari Wilson cover. London performed the song in the film The Girl Can't Help It (1956), and her recording gained later attention in the films Passion of Mind (2000) and V for Vendetta (2006). The song "Yummy Yummy Yummy" was featured on the HBO television series Six Feet Under and appears on its soundtrack album. London's "Must Be Catchin'" was featured in the 2011 premiere episode of the ABC series Pan Am. Her last recording was "My Funny Valentine" for the soundtrack of the Burt Reynolds film Sharky's Machine (1981).
Other popular singles include "Hot Toddy", "Daddy", and "Desafinado". Recordings such as "Go Slow" epitomized her career style: her voice is slow, smoky, and playfully sensual.
She was married to Jack Webb, of Dragnet fame. Her obvious beauty and self-poise (she was a pinup girl prized by GIs during World War II) contrasted with his pedestrian appearance and stiff-as-a-board acting technique (much parodied by impersonators). This unlikely pairing arose from his and her love for jazz; their marriage lasted from July 1947 to November 1953. They had two daughters, one who was killed in a traffic accident in the 1990s and one who survived London. In 1954, having become somewhat reclusive after her divorce from Jack Webb, she met jazz composer and musician Bobby Troup at a club on La Brea Blvd. They married on December 31, 1959 and remained married until Troup's death in February 1999. Together, they had one daughter and twin sons.
London suffered a stroke in 1995, and was in poor health until her death in Encino, California, at the age of seventy-four, survived by four of her five children. She died on18th October 2000, and was buried in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Laura
Julie London Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Of something that never happened, yet you recall it well
You know the feeling of recognizing someone
That you've never met as far as you could tell, well
Laura is the face in the misty light
Footsteps that you hear down the hall
The laugh that floats on a summer night
And you see Laura on the train that is passing through
Those eyes, how familiar they seem
She gave your very first kiss to you
That was Laura but she's only a dream
The lyrics of Julie London’s song, Laura is filled with the theme of reminiscence and memory. The song portrays the feeling of half-remembered remembrances, the sense of familiarity with people that we have never met in reality. Laura is depicted as a face in the misty light, footsteps heard down the hall, and the laughter that floats on a summer night that one can never quite recall. The song describes how the singer sees Laura on a train that passes by, with eyes familiarly attributable to Laura. The singer realizes that Laura was an entity in a dream, and she had given them their first kiss.
The first stanza of the song paints a vivid picture of mistaken memory or a remembrance that never happened. It creates a sense of nostalgia, which is a recurring theme throughout the tune. The second stanza conveys Laura as an entity that is ubiquitous in the mind but not anyone visible in reality. Through a description of Laura, the song creates a sense of nostalgia, sentimentality, and memory that exist in various forms.
In conclusion, Julie London’s song Laura is a complex and beautifully crafted piece that displays a tremendous amount of emotions and creates vivid imagery through its lyrics.
Line by Line Meaning
You know the feeling of something half remembered
The sensation of recollecting an experience in only a vague and incomplete manner
Of something that never happened, yet you recall it well
That strange sense of knowing an occurrence that is entirely imagined or unreal
You know the feeling of recognizing someone
That sense of familiarity with another person
That you've never met as far as you could tell, well
Despite not having met the person before at any point in time, still feeling acquainted with them
Laura is the face in the misty light
Laura is the image of someone who is physically distant or ethereal, yet still vivid and recognizable
Footsteps that you hear down the hall
The faint sound of audio cues that lend to vividness of the memory
The laugh that floats on a summer night
Recollecting the distant and vague auditory details that lend a surreal quality to the memory
That you can never quite recall
That although this made-up experience exists, it's not remembered in any tangible way
And you see Laura on the train that is passing through
The momentary glimpse of things that are imaginative but not entirely impossible
Those eyes, how familiar they seem
Even though they are not real, they still carry a sense of recognition with them
She gave your very first kiss to you
Laura personifies events that were never real, such as one's initial romantic experiences
That was Laura but she's only a dream
Even though it feels real, it's not more than a hazy fantasy.
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: David Raksin
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind