UPON MY LIPS A SONG

Her career is more than 30 years old, and her style hasn't changed too much in all that time, but in spite of this Kate Smith is far from passe. Her adolescent determination to sing professionally led her to Broadway at the age of 17, for a part as a chubby buffoon -- Tiny Little in the musical comedy Honeymoon Lane-(1926) that shocked and humiliated her staid maternal grandparents. This autobiography has all the candid directness of Kate herself, revealing the simple piety of a devout Catholic, her allegiance to family before all else, and her conviction that a single woman can, by intelligently pursuing a career for which she is suited, lead as rewarding a life as do her married friends. Her devotion to Ted Collins, her expert manager for many years, may be unparalleled in theatrical circles -- they have never, we are told, had a written contract. Americans who watch her current TV shows, and those who remember Kate Smith's activities for the USO and war bond drives and the implicit sincerity of her decades in radio will want to read her story, although its pace is no less measured and deliberate than her life has been.