Viola Smith pioneering swing big band drummer dies at 107! She performs in 1951 with Ada Leonard

Jazz Women in Film: Indiana - Ada Leonard and her All-Girl Swing Orchestra (1951) - -[RESTORED] Viola Smith, known as a jazz session musician for many years on many recordings, is seen here performing in this "Snader Telescription" short music film having just passed on Oct. 21, 2020 at 107 years old! In a classic "I Love Lucy" episode, "Lucy's Club Dance", Ricky conducts his 'all-girl orchestra', which were his male orchestra dressed in drag (the costumes are identical - more than likely a nod to Ada). I can't help but keep watching this film and envisioning that episode. You make your own opinion, but these ladies are swinging. The only weakness I can't help hear is the trumpet section. Lots of 'butter notes' and intonation issues, but regardless, those sax soloists are hoofin'! The source of this live performance captured on film (this was filmed on the cheap) was from the infamous "Snader Telescriptions" which populated local TV of the early 1950s with these 2-3 minute short music films used as filler. From YANKS 9/10/44 - "Glamor? Say, don't make me laugh", said Ada Leonard, crossing her legs and making a funny face. "There's as much glamor in trouping Army camps as there is in digging slit trenches. This glamor business - it's getting on my nerves. Anyway, no outfit ever picked me to be the girl they'd like most to have pneumonia with or guard on a lonely South Seas isle. And I've been to an awful lot of camps." She has too, Ada Leonard and the 16 dolls in her All-American Girl Orchestra have been hitting Army and Navy posts on the USO coast-to-coast circuit for the past two years in straight six-month stretches. They have played practically every post in the country that has stage facilities, and a few that don't. Playing the USO circuit, Ada explained, was mostly routine stuff plus a lot of hard work. Her nearest approach to romance was when a dogface at Chanute Field, Ill., tried to make a pass at her in the back of a bus. "He was a little high." she said. "I talked to him like a big sister and he calmed down." From Wikipedia: Leonard was born in Lawton, Oklahoma, on July 22, 1915. Her father was an actor, and her mother a dancer who also played several different musical instruments. Leonard debuted on stage at age 2, singing and dancing in her parent's vaudeville act. Later she was billed as Baby Ada. When she was 17, she went to Chicago and began performing in burlesque. She also sang in night clubs in Chicago. While Leonard played the cello and the piano, she did not play either instrument professionally. The Ada Leonard Orchestra was the first all-female band officially signed by the USO, and it performed at army camps throughout the United States during World War II. From 1952 to 1954, Leonard hosted a variety show on television; Search for Girls, starring Leonard and her orchestra, ran on KTTV in Los Angeles for 30 minutes on Friday nights. She subsequently went on to realize her ambition of leading an all-male big band. Leonard portrayed Princess Zarina, a fan dancer, in the film Meet the Missus (1937). She and her orchestra performed in the film My Dream Is Yours (1949). Leonard was married, and widowed, twice: first to George L. McCall, who had managed her career; and, subsequently, Dr. Harold Bernstein, one of the founders of the Reiss-Davis Clinic. Leonard died in Santa Monica, California on November 27, 1997, at the age of 82.