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 In the 1930s and ‘40s, one of America’s most popular singers was a young woman from Greenville, Virginia named Kate Smith, who not only popularized Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” - considered by many to be the nation’s second national anthem - during World War II, but was a superstar throughout the golden age of radio.

Indeed, Smith was what one might call a Renaissance woman; not only could she sins songs like “River, Stay ‘Way From My Door” and “The White Cliffs of Dover” with her rich and powerful voice,  she also had comedic and dramatic talent as well. Her radio variety show, The Kate Smith Hour, was one of the most popular series on the airwaves for eight years, featuring stars along the lines of Abbott and Costello and Henny Youngman as a radio precursor to “Your Show of Shows” and “Saturday Night Live.”

Smith also made the leap from radio to the new medium known as television, appearing on talk shows, variety shows, and music specials well into the 1950s.

Interestingly, Smith wasn’t only a big star popularity-wise, but she was also literally big.  In 1937, when she was 30 years old, she weighed 235 pounds.

Now, of course, there were recording industry execs, managers and even other singers who made fun of Smith’s full figure and weight, but that didn’t affect her one successful career or popularity one bit.  In a 1938 autobiography, Smith gave one of her managers credit for her success and thanked him for his belief in her talent, saying, “Ted Collins was the first man who regarded me as a singer, and didn’t even seem to notice that I was a big girl.”  In the same book she also wrote, “I’m big, and I sing, and boy, when I sing, I sing all over!”

Smith, of course, was a superstar in a less shallow and far less sex-driven musical industry when a female vocalist was known more for her singing talent than for her physical attributes.  So were Ethel Merman, Ella Fitzgerald, Janis Joplin, and Mama Cass, who were legendary Broadway, jazz and rock singers. Although those women straddled different eras and genres, they had loads of creative and artistic talent that outweighed their lack of “hotness.”

In the Age of Britney

Now, of course, it is hard to visualize a modern-day Kate Smith getting past, say, the Miami or San Antonio auditions of Fox’s “American Idol” unless she were to go on a Slim-Fast Diet or be a contestant on NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” before deciding to try out.  With perhaps the exception of hip-hop’s Queen Latifah, many of today’s top women of music seem to be more Playboy centerfold-ready than they are songbirds.

Take, for instance, 27-year-old Britney Spears.  She’s been in show business for more than half her life, appearing as a Mouseketeer in Disney’s The New Mickey Mouse Club in the early 1990s, singing briefly in the all-girl group Innosense, then striking out on her own in 1997 as an opener for the Backstreet Boys and other acts.

Even though Spears has a strong soprano voice and used it effectively in her first big hit “…Baby One More Time” in 1998, she began to be “sexualized” almost as soon as she left the protective shadow of Mickey Mouse’s ears.  A controversial cover story in which Spears wore revealing outfits that included black push-up bras and very tiny black shorts was published in 1999 by Rolling Stone magazine.  This was the first - but not the last - instance in which Spears used her looks to imply a cross between childlike innocence and adult eroticism.

As Spears matured from teen to young adult, her sexy singer persona became more dominant, with maybe too much emphasis on “sexy.”   This trend is illustrated by the famous girl-girl kiss she shared with Madonna at the 2003 MTV Music Video Awards ceremony.  (It is hard to imagine Kate Smith in a lip-lock with, say, Lena Horne or Edith Piaf….)   

But “hotness” - which comes and goes over time - does not a successful career make in show business if it’s not matched by creative or even performing skills.   Spears is reasonably attractive, at least in the eyes of some, but she’s not as good a singer as Beyonce or even newcomer Katie Perry, and her acting is so-so. (Her one big attempt to be a movie actress, the movie Crossroads, tanked; her appearances on various TV sitcoms have fared a bit better.)

Sadly, thanks to the globalization of the media and the emphasis of sexuality over true talent means that girls with great voices but not-so-great-looks - the Kate Smiths of the 21^st Century - will have to take a back seat to the Playboy-ready Britney Spears and “Bikini Girls” who ooze physical hotness but might want to take Remedial Music 101 workshops.

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