Blanche Ring on AllMovie

One of America's great vaudeville entertainers, Blanche Ring is probably best remembered for introducing two of her era's great song hits, "Come Josephine in My Flying Machine" and "Rings on My Fingers, Bells on My Toes." That was in 1911, but Ring had earlier popularized Jean Schwartz and William Jerome's "Bedelia" in the 1903 Broadway show The Jersey Lily and "My Molly-O" in Sergeant Blue (1905). The stocky comedienne was brought to the screen in 1915 courtesy of actor/producer Hobart Bosworth who starred her as a typical American tourist finding romance in Mexico in The Yankee Girl. The film was successful enough but Ring did not film again until 1925, when her nephew, director Edward Sutherland, persuaded her to play W.C. Field's matronly love interest in It's the Old Army Game. Later still, she was one of a handful of veteran vaudeville entertainers briefly spotted in Bing Crosby's If I Had My Way (1940) and played a minor supporting role in a late-entry screwball comedy, Having Wonderful Crime (1945). A member of a prominent show business dynasty, Blanche Ring was the sister of Cyril Ring and the sister-in-law of silent star Thomas Meighan. Her signature tune "Come Josephine in My Flying Machine" enjoyed renewed popularity after being performed by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in the 1997 blockbuster hit Titanic.