Walter Van Brunt was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 tenor known initially for his recordings on Thomas Alva Edison's Blue Amberol Records

Blue Amberol Records

Blue Amberol Records was the trademarked name for cylinder recordings manufactured by the Edison company in the U.S. from 1912 to 1929. They were issued as a replacement to the 4 minute black wax Amberol cylinder introduced in 1908 which in turn replaced the 2 minute wax cylinders that Edison had...

 and later for his rôle in a scandal involving a stage name

Stage name

A stage name, also called a showbiz name or screen name, is a pseudonym used by performers and entertainers such as actors, wrestlers, comedians, and musicians.-Motivation to use a stage name:...

 and case of adultery

Adultery

Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...

.

Van Brunt began his singing career at age 17 as an imitator of singer Billy Murray

Billy Murray (singer)

William Thomas "Billy" Murray was one of the most popular singers in the United States in the early decades of the 20th century...

. He was soon performing with Ada Jones

Ada Jones

Ada Jones was a popular mezzo-soprano who recorded from 1905 to the early 1920s. She was born in Lancashire, England but moved with her family to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the age of six in 1879...

 and John Bieling as well as the American Quartet

American Quartet (ensemble)

The American Quartet was a quartet of singers that recorded for various companies from 1899 to 1925. The lineup varied over the years, but the most famous lineup recorded for the Victor Talking Machine Company from 1909 to 1913.*John Bieling - first tenor...

. He worked in vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 and on Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

, including in the musical Eileen

Eileen (musical)

Eileen is a comic opera with music by Victor Herbert and lyrics and book by Henry Blossom based loosely on the 1835 novel Rory O'Moore by Herbert's grandfather, Samuel Lover. Set in 1798, the story concerns an Irish revolutionary arrested by the British for treason...

. Van Brunt had 40 hits on pop charts, including his 1914 duet "When the Green Leaves Turn to Gold" with Elizabeth Spencer

Elizabeth Spencer (soprano)

Elizabeth Spencer was an American singer during the later 19th century and early 20th century.She is primarily remembered as a recording artist for Thomas Alva Edison...

.

In the late 1910s, Van Brunt began embroiling himself in a scandal which shook Broadway and put his career into decline. The difficulties started in 1917 when Van Brunt began using the name "Walter J. Scanlan" (the scandal was further confused by newspapers which rendered the name as "Scanlon") to assume the identity of Irish tenor Walter J. Scanlan who had had an established career before dying without making a recording. Allegations were raised, but never proved, that Eileens Irish-American conductor, Victor Herbert

Victor Herbert

Victor August Herbert was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I...

, had encouraged the subterfuge.

The scandal became overlapped with Van Brunt's bigamy

Bigamy

In cultures that practice marital monogamy, bigamy is the act of entering into a marriage with one person while still legally married to another. Bigamy is a crime in most western countries, and when it occurs in this context often neither the first nor second spouse is aware of the other...

 with a woman known as Ruth Scanlan, siring a child with her and prompting his wife Lillian to sue for divorce

Divorce

Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...

, which was granted in 1925 by an Irish-American judge who, in announcing his decision that Van Brunt should pay alimony, stated that Van Brunt had besmirched the reputation of the Irish.

From 1929 to 1933, Van Brunt's career was partially rescued by Murray's use of Van Brunt on various radio programs.

External links

• Discography of Walter Van Brunt on Victor Records
  Victor Talking Machine Company
  The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey....
  
   from the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings (EDVR)