Walk of Fame honor for James Melton
One of America’s most famous tenors, who was a movie, radio, TV, concert and opera star, and pioneer in car collecting, grew up in Marion County.
The Walk of Fame plaque for James Melton is shown after it was unveiled during the unveiling of the James Melton Walk of Fame plaque at the Marion Theatre in Ocala, Fla. on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2024.
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Listening to the powerful voice of James Melton, who was a star on radio and television, in concert and at the Metropolitan Opera, with its perfect inflection and enunciation, one would likely never guess he grew up on a farm and lumbermill in Citra in north Marion County.
James Melton in the 1930s [Photo courtesy Margo Melton Nutt]
On Wednesday, Nov. 13, on a day as bright as his career, Melton was memorialized with a plaque on the Walk of Fame in front of the historic Marion Theatre in downtown Ocala. The event originally was set for Oct. 10, but Hurricane Milton caused it to be rescheduled.
James Melton as Pinkerton in “Mme Butterfly” at the Metropolitan Opera (1940s). [Photo courtesy Margo Melton Nutt]
According to his biography on the IMDB website, a high school teacher in Ocala noticed Melton’s singing talents and encouraged him to further his vocal studies. He graduated from Ward-Belmont Conservatory in Nashville. At the University of Florida, he played saxophone in the college band and sang in the glee club. At Vanderbilt University in Nashville, he studied under Gaetano de Luca, then continued his studies at Florida State and Georgia State universities and privately with Michael Raucheisen in Berlin, Germany. After arriving in New York in 1927, he became part of NBC’s “Roxy’s Gang,” appeared on The Bell Telephone Hour (1959) and other shows. Between 1927 and 1933, he sang with the Revelers vocal quartet as first tenor on radio and in concert tours across America and Europe.
By 1934, Melton became a solo performer and began to appear on radio, accompanied George Gershwin on a national tour and was signed to a three-picture Warner Bros. film contract. He studied in New York under vocal coach Angelo Canarutto prior to debuting with the Cincinnati Zoo Opera as Pinkerton in “Mme. Butterfly” in 1938, a role he continued for years in Cincinnati, Chicago and San Carlo, where he also sang other roles. He was a member of the Chicago Civic Opera Company. On Dec. 7, 1942, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Tamino. Throughout the 1940s he was a leading tenor at the Met, appearing in 83 performances of seven operas. He also was featured on a weekly radio series and had a recording contract with RCA Red Seal and was very active in wartime bond rallies, military hospital tours and benefit concerts. He later began to appear on television, hosting his own musical series in the 1950s and appearing on other programs while also performing in nightclubs and producing a revue that toured the East Coast.
Melton, a lifelong automobile aficionado, created the Melton Museum of Antique Automobiles in Norwalk, Connecticut, which opened in July of 1948. He later moved his James Melton Autorama to Hypoluxo in Florida, near Palm Beach.
Melton’s Associated Press obituary notice in the “Los Angeles Times” on April 23, 1961, noted that the handsome, 6-foot-2 and usually smiling Melton made his home in Weston, Mass., with his wife, Marjorie McClure of Akron, and their daughter, Margot.
The notice stated that the singer, who intended to become a lawyer, credited the late A. A. Murphree, president of the University of Florida, with advising him to take up a musical career after Murphree heard him singing in chapel. Although Melton’s success in New York was almost instant, he had some difficulty getting a chance to show his talent.
“Roxy” Rothafel, headman at the Roxy, “was too busy to give him an audition. Melton settled that by singing in a loud tone outside Rothafel’s office door while aides shouted in protest. Rothafel went out to see what the commotion was about, liked Melton’s voice and hired him on the spot. From 1940 to 1942 alone, he gave 30 operatic and 100 concert performances and appeared on 125 radio broadcasts.”
James Melton and daughter Margo on stage (1950s). [Photo courtesy Margo Melton Nutt]
A FULL LIFE
According to his daughter, Margo Melton Nutt, in her book, “James Melton: The tenor of his times,” her grandfather, J.W. Melton, with his wife, Rose, had four sons and three daughters. James was the third born of the boys.
“Before James was a year old, J.W. moved his growing family to Citra, Florida, so he could take advantage of an opportunity in the lumber business,” Nutt wrote. “The hands who worked at the Melton sawmill lived in shacks on the dirt roads lacing through the pine groves. It was from those workers that young James first heard the Negro spirituals he sang so movingly in his concert repertoire years later. By the time he was 12, James would drive the circuit before school, picking up the workers in a Ford Model T and taking them to the mill, fetching supplies and pickup up the payroll at the bank.”
She noted that her father, who often worked on machinery and vehicles, became “quite a mechanic.”
The liner notes of the book state that Melton was called “America’s Favorite Tenor” from the 1920s through the 1950s.
“He was perhaps the first multi-media performer—in a career that spanned concerts, recordings, movies, the Metropolitan Opera, radio and television. His fame as a singer was equaled by his renown as an antique car collector. In this hobby he was a pioneer in recognizing these vehicles not only as an important part of America’s history, but as works of art. His career and his hobby reflected the two great technologies that knit the country together in the first half of the 20th century—radio and the automobile,” Nutt wrote.
She offers tantalizing tidbits throughout the book, including her father’s friendships and collaborations with notables such as Will Rogers, George Gershwin, William Randolph Hearst, Milton Berle, Irving Berlin, Walt Disney and Henry Ford II.
The book notes share that Nutt wrote an biographical memoir that allowed her to tell the story from her point of view—anecdotally. The pages are filled with details about her famous father, her beautiful and smart mother, and the ups and downs of their storied life, which included his penchant for lavish spending, dalliances outside his marriage and, ultimately, a diminishing call for his talents.
“The James Melton story is a rags-to-riches-to-rags story of a talented, confident young man who raised himself from obscure beginnings in a tiny Florida town to the height of fame on stage, screen and airwaves—but who could not live without the adulation of an adoring public, and who had nothing to fall back on as he aged and musical tastes changed,” she wrote.
THE WALK OF FAME
There were a number of people who helped ensure that Melton received a plaque on the Walk of Fame in front of the Marion Theatre, among them Carswell Ponder, a longtime local resident, businessman and community supporter.
“It’s kind of a long, drawn-out thing. It goes back several years,” he said in his charming southern drawl. “Carol Cole was a niece of James Melton and grew up in Ocala. One of her classmates was David Stafford. He knew that Melton was an outstanding individual but didn’t know the whole history. He was at Woodlawn Cemetery and ran across the Melton plot, where there are six or eight sites and monuments, and he noticed the grounds were not being kept up and, because of his friendship with Carol, he cleaned it up, which he did for several years. At some point, he found a book about Melton called ‘Bright Wheels Rolling.’ Somewhere along the line he spoke with Margo, and she told him about her book. He got it and read it, about the end of last year, and we were talking about it, and I told him my mother knew Melton and that my brother had met him one time. I read Margo’s book, and it just blew me away all the stuff Melton had done.”
The two decided to “see what we can do,” so they reached out to Laurie Zink, formerly the executive director of the now defunct Ocala Film Foundation, which hosted an annual Ocala Film Festival for a while and initiated the walk of fame, and who also is involved with many other organizations. She suggested getting the plaque for Melton to add to the walk of fame.
Ponder said it wasn’t long before a lot of other people came on board.
“Buddy Martin got involved. Gerald Ergle got involved. Brad Rogers, Jessi Miller, Jessica Fieldhouse, Jeff Robertson, Tom James, John Dozier … a whole bunch of people. It was kind of a grassroots effort. Several people helped raise money and gave cash donations. We had two major sponsors: Rick Schmidt of National Parts Depot, picked up the tab for the plaque and the event sponsor is Angie Lewis,” Ponder said.
“It was a community-wide effort,” he said.
“This was a private group that put this together,” said Zink. “Myself, Brad, Gerald, Carswell, David, have worked on the whole thing. The walk of fame has been important to me from the foundation and the film festival, and so I think it’s very cool that it is continuing and that as you unearth cool stories, you put the plaque on the walk and the story will continue to be told.”
At the event on Nov. 13, Schmidt had a 1911 White gas automobile on display. That model was one of Melton’s favorite vehicles.
“We sponsored the plaque because James Melton is not just a very famous entertainer from way back, but also a very noteworthy and early car collector. My father and I are huge automobile collectors and car enthusiasts, and we also are very involved with the Antique Automobile Club of America, which was a club that Mr. Melton was also very deeply involved with,” Schmidt said.
“So, there was a lot of symbiosis there and I just felt it was the right thing for us to do, being a large presence for the collector car hobby here in Ocala, to sponsor the plaque for Mr. Melton. We’re fans for his automotive endeavors, where there are a lot of fans of his singing,” Schmidt added.
Rogers was the spokesperson for the unveiling of the plaque.
“We are here to honor James Melton and while many people don’t know who he is, he is arguably the greatest entertainer ever to come out of Marion County. He rose to fame in the 1920s and ‘30s and at one point was voted the number one soloist in America and was part of the group the Revelers, the number one group in America at the same time. And he was a genuine pioneer in car collecting,” Rogers said.
“James Melton was extremely famous. He had an estate in Connecticut and a townhouse in New York and he was a big deal in his time. And he had two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and who has that? When he died, his funeral in New York City had 3,500 people. His daughter said she knew he was famous, but she had no idea how famous until he died,” Rogers added.
A DAUGHTER’S MEMORIES
Nutt said in an email exchange that she doesn’t recall being in Ocala, “although I might have been there as a small child. I was 15 when my father died. I did not accompany my mother to Ocala for his burial in Woodlawn Cemetery.”
She said she does remember her father “speaking fondly about Marguerite Porter, music supervisor at Ocala High School, which he attended, who channeled my father’s budding talent and restless teenage energy toward music. He kept in touch with her for the rest of her life.”
Of her life with her energetic father and equally resourceful mother, she offered, “In many ways, we were a typical American family of the mid-1940s, but with a distinctly Melton twist owing to his fame. For instance, there always seemed to be a professional photographer around to capture any newsworthy occasion, and that included strictly family events. Our ‘family photos’ were all 8×10 glossies.”
“As a long-awaited only child—my parents were married for 17 years before they adopted me—my life was full to the brim of anything a child could want,” she noted.
“Many little girls put their fathers on pedestals. But mine was literally up there—on stage. I could sit in the audience night after night and gaze up at him, as he held listeners spellbound. One of my father’s favorite concert tunes was ‘Surrey with the Fringe on Top’ from ‘Oklahoma.’ If there was a willing little girl in the audience, he would call her up on stage to sit beside him as if in an open carriage, while he sang the song to her. If I was in the audience, as I frequently was, that little girl was me,” she continued.
As for how she would like people to remember her father, Nutt said, “I think his generosity was a key feature of his personality—he was very generous to his family, friends and colleagues. He realized how very fortunate he was to be in a position to share his wealth.”
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