There’s a brief nightclub scene in the 1953 film “Torch Song,” starring Joan Crawford, where the pianist and vocalist is Rudy Render. It was a typical cameo, so much a part of Hollywood fare, that gave an African American performer an opportunity, although in most cases, it had nothing at all to do with the plot. Not only did we wonder what happened to him later in the film, we also wondered what happened to his movie career.
Not much happened in either instance for the man born Rudolph Valentino Render on July 1, 1926 in Terre Haute, Ind. As a student at Indiana State University, he studied piano and was a charter member of the Chi Sigma chapter of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. He was still enrolled in college when he began performing at various clubs around the city. It was during one of these gigs that he met the writer Bill Hays, the son of the politician and deviser of the Hays Code
(A set of guidelines that regulated the moral content of Hollywood films from 1934 to 1968).
At Hays’s suggestion, Render moved to Hollywood before completing his master’s degree at Indiana State Teachers College. After a fortuitous meeting with agent Berle Adams, he was immediately given a chance to record Jessie Mae Robinson’s song “Sneakin’ Around” for London Records. The song was soon number 2 on the “Billboard” R&B chart in 1949, but his recording career was quickly interrupted by a call to military service.
That small cameo role he performed in “Torch Song” came just as he mustered out of the Army. His appearance in the film earned him chances to continue his nightclub routine and studio recording on several minor labels.
In 1959, he co-wrote the title music for the film “It Started with a Kiss,” starring Debbie Reynolds, an opportunity that came as a result of knowing Reynolds’s brother. This led to his becoming Reynolds’s musical director for 22 years, working with her on stage shows and films, including the 1964 production “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” which was nominated for an Academy Award. (Reynolds was nominated for best actress, but Julie Andrews won with her performance in “Mary Poppins.”)
There was no mention of Render in the production credits, but he gets a resounding shout-out in Debbie Reynolds’s memoir. “My brother, [Billy], had been drafted when I was seventeen and was stationed at Fort Ord in Monterey, along with David Janssen and Dick Long,” Reynolds recalled. “Weekends when I didn’t have USO dates I would go up and entertain. One of Billy’s friends, Rudy Render, who worked for the general, played accompaniment for me. Rudy, who was black, was an excellent professional musician in his own right. We became fast friends, and the friendship grew and grew.
“One weekend Billy came home on leave and invited Rudy to dinner,” Reynolds continued. “No one had bothered to tell my father Rudy was black. He arrived just as we were sitting down to dinner. Daddy took one look at Rudy and got up from the table. Billy, Mother, and I were mortally embarrassed.
“Mother said something about Daddy having an upset stomach, and it was covered up. But he never came back to the table. After Rudy left that night, we went out to see Daddy, who was tinkering with a machine he was repairing in the garage. I asked him why he had left the table during dinner. ‘But Rudy is a friend, Daddy,’ I said.”
A few months later, Reynolds wrote, “Rudy, who was from Indiana, was in a very serious automobile accident in Los Angeles. He had fractured his back and needed to stay in bed for a few weeks. He had no place to stay. Mother and Daddy had recently done over the garage and made it into a small ‘guesthouse’ with twin beds and a kitchenette. Rudy moved in there and Mother nursed him for three weeks. I was working or traveling during most of that time and so Daddy had to help Mother with Rudy. He grew attached to Rudy and began to think of him as a son. In time Rudy became as close to my father as anyone he ever knew, other than my brother and myself. Rudy called me the night Daddy died, years later, and sobbed so much I had to hang up because I was having a hard time controlling myself. For Rudy it was like losing his own father.”
Render left the music business in 1972 and devoted himself to teaching at an elementary school in North Hollywood until retiring in 2001. He was 88 when he died in 2014.