Unfair advantage

Vallée as bandleader Skip Houston the movie Sweet Music

“That’s one of the tragedies of this life — that the men who are most in need of a beating up are always enormous.’’

— Hubert Prior Vallée (July 28, 1901 – July 3, 1986), known professionally as Rudy Vallée, was an American singer, musician, movie actor and radio host. He was one of the first modern pop stars of the teen idol type, but was known to be in private a nasty, egomaniacal man, with a violent temper.

He was born in Island Pond, Vt., near the Canadian border, the son of Catherine Lynch and Charles Alphonse Vallée. His maternal grandparents were Irish, while his paternal grandparents were French-Canadians from Quebec. He grew up in Westbrook, Maine.

After graduating from Yale, he formed Rudy Vallée and the Connecticut Yankees, having partly named himself after saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft.

Bridge Street in downtown Westbrook, Maine, in 1912, when Vallee was living in the town as a boy.

Island Pond, Maine, where Vallee was born. (The) Island (in the) Pond from which the village takes its name