Hubert Prior Vallée was born in Island Pond, Vermont, on July 28, 1901, the son of Catherine Lynch and Charles Alphonse Vallée. His maternal grandparents were Irish, while his paternal grandparents were French-Canadians from Quebec. Vallée grew up in Westbrook, Maine. On March 29, 1917, he enlisted to fight in World War I, but was discharged when U.S. Navy authorities discovered he was only 15 years old. He had enlisted in Portland, Maine, under the false birth date of July 28, 1899. He was discharged at the Naval Training Station in Newport, Rhode Island, on May 17, 1917, after 41 days of active service.

After graduation, he formed Rudy Vallée and the Connecticut Yankees, having named himself after saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft. With this band (formed in 1928), which included two violins, two saxophones, a piano, a banjo, and drums, he started singing. He had a thin, wavering tenor voice and seemed more at home singing sweet ballads than jazz songs. But his singing, suave manner, and boyish good looks attracted attention, especially from young women. Vallée was given a recording contract, and in 1928 he started performing on the radio.

Vallée made his first records in 1928 for Columbia’s low-priced labels Harmony, Velvet Tone, and Diva. He signed to RCA Victor in February 1929 and remained with the company through 1931, leaving after a heated dispute with executives over song selections. He then recorded for the short-lived Hit of the Week label which sold rather poor quality records laminated onto a cardboard base. In August 1932, he signed with Columbia and remained with the label through 1933; Valée returned to RCA Victor in June 1933; his records were initially issued on Victor’s low-priced Bluebird label until November 1933, when he was back on the standard Victor label. He remained with RCA Victor until signing with ARC in 1936. ARC issued his records on the Perfect, Melotone, Conqueror and Romeo labels until 1937, when he again returned to RCA Victor.

With his group the Connecticut Yankees, Vallée’s best-known recordings include “The Stein Song” (a.k.a University of Maine school song) in 1929 and “Vieni, Vieni” in the latter 1930s.

In 1929, Vallée began hosting The Fleischmann’s Yeast Hour, a popular radio show with guests such as Fay Wray and Richard Cromwell in dramatic skits. Vallée continued hosting radio shows such as the Royal Gelatin Hour, Vallee Varieties, and The Rudy Vallee Show through the 1930s and 1940s.

In 1929, Vallée made his first feature film, The Vagabond Lover for RKO Radio. His first films were made to cash in on his singing popularity. While his initial performances were rather wooden, his acting greatly improved in the late 1930s and 1940s, and by the time he began working with Preston Sturges in the 1940s, he had become a successful comedic supporting player. He appeared opposite Claudette Colbert in Sturges’s 1942 screwball comedy The Palm Beach Story. Other films in which he appeared include I Remember Mama, Unfaithfully Yours and The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.

According to George P. Oslin, Vallée on July 28, 1933 was the recipient of the first singing telegram. A fan telegraphed birthday greeting, and Oslin had the operator sing “Happy Birthday to You”.

Vallée got into a fist fight with producer George White on the set of the 1934 film George White’s Scandals. Dorothy Brooks wrote in 1936, “Other stars on the air have their troubles, their disagreements, and yet you don’t read about their ending in black eyes. Only Rudy Vallee seems to figure in endings of this kind.” In an interview with Brooks, Vallée claimed he found fighting “savage and stupid” and “the wrong way to try to solve problems, because it never solves them”. When asked why he got into fights, he replied, “I just lost my temper. I’ll admit I have a too-quick temper.”

When Vallée took his contractual vacations from his national radio show in 1937, he insisted his sponsor hire Louis Armstrong as his substitute This was the first instance of an African-American hosting a national radio program. Vallée wrote the introduction for Armstrong’s 1936 book Swing That Music.

His last hit record was a reissue of “As Time Goes By”, popularized in the 1942 film Casablanca. Due to the 1942-44 AFM recording ban, RCA Victor reissued the version he had recorded in 1931. During World War II, he enlisted in the United States Coast Guard to help direct the 11th district Coast Guard band as a Chief Petty Officer. He was promoted to Lieutenant and led the 40 piece band to great success. In 1944 he was placed on the inactive list and returned to radio.

From 1948 to 1952, Vallée owned Vallee-Video, a television production company formed in the early days of national TV broadcasts. The company was incorporated on April 3, 1948. Vallée made 16mm film shorts for television, including These Foolish Things and Under a Campus Moon, in which he appeared himself. Ed Wynn, Pinky Lee, Buddy Lester and Cyril Smith also appeared in Vallee-Video productions.

In 1949, Vallee-Video produced one of the first cartoon shows on television, Tele-Comics.

Vallee-Video’s breakthrough in 1952 would have been a 15-minute television show based on the Dick Tracy comic strip starring Vallée’s friend Ralph Byrd, who played the character in four successful Dick Tracy theatrical serials from 1937 to 1941. Vallée sold the show as a pilot to NBC. Vallée and Byrd also worked on a proposed radio show based on the comic strip Hawkshaw the Detective. Unfortunately, Byrd died in August 1952, bringing the Dick Tracy production to a halt, and spelling the end for Vallee-Video.

In 1955, Vallée was featured in Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, co-starring Jane Russell, Alan Young, and Jeanne Crain. The production was filmed on location in Paris. The film was based on the Anita Loos novel that was a sequel to her acclaimed Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Gentlemen Marry Brunettes was popular throughout Europe at the time and was released in France as A Paris Pour les Quatre (“Paris for the Four”), and in Belgium as Tevieren Te Parijs.

Vallée performed on Broadway as J.B. Biggley in the 1961 musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and reprised the role in the 1967 film version. He appeared in the 1960s Batman television show as the villain Lord Marmaduke Ffogg and in 1971 as a vindictive surgeon in the Night Gallery episode “Marmalade Wine”.

Vallée died of cancer at his home on July 3, 1986, while watching the televised centennial ceremonies of the restored Statue of Liberty. His wife Eleanor said that his last words were, “I wish we could be there; you know how I love a party.”

In 1995, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him.

For his work in radio, Vallee was inducted into the Vermont Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2011.