Agnes Woodward (January 1872 — June 1938) was an American music educator and professional whistler, founder and head of the California School of Artistic Whistling in

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

Early life

Anna Agnes Woodward was born in

Waterloo, New York Waterloo is a town in Seneca County, New York, United States. The population was 7,338 at the 2020 census. The town and its major community are named after Waterloo, Belgium, where Napoleon was defeated. There is also a village called Water ...

and raised in

Tecumseh, Michigan Tecumseh is a city in Lenawee County in the U.S. state of Michigan, near the River Raisin. Tecumseh is about southwest of Detroit, south of Ann Arbor, and north of Toledo, Ohio. The main street of downtown is Chicago Boulevard, also designat ...

,J. M. Schlitz
"(Anna) Agnes Woodward"
''Grove Music Online'' (November 2013). the daughter of Charles Meredyth Woodward and Martha McGlashan Woodward. Her father was a military surgeon and veteran of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

. She trained as a singer at the Detroit Conservatory of Music.Daniel H. Resneck, "Whistling Women" ''American Heritage'' (August–September 1982). Actress and screenwriter

Bess Meredyth Bess Meredyth (born Helen Elizabeth MacGlashen, February 12, 1890 – July 13, 1969) was a screenwriter and silent film actress. The wife of film director Michael Curtiz, Meredyth wrote ''The Affairs of Cellini'' (1934) and adapted ''The Unsuspec ...

was her first cousin.

Career

Woodward sang with the Whalom Opera Company briefly as a young woman. She moved to California with her widowed mother and studied

birdsong Bird vocalization includes both bird calls and bird songs. In non-technical use, bird songs are the bird sounds that are melodious to the human ear. In ornithology and birding, songs (relatively complex vocalizations) are distinguished by func ...

to develop her own "Bird Method" of teaching whistling, and opened the California School of Artistic Whistling in 1909, with branches later opening in

Glendale Glendale is the anglicised version of the Gaelic Gleann Dail, which means ''valley of fertile, low-lying arable land''. It may refer to: Places Australia * Glendale, New South Wales ** Stockland Glendale, a shopping centre *Glendale, Queensland, ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

Yakima Yakima ( or ) is a city in and the county seat of Yakima County, Washington, and the state's 11th-largest city by population. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 96,968 and a metropolitan population of 256,728. The uninco ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, and

Portland Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...

. Her school's prospectus laid out her belief that "There is an art of whistling which belongs to the higher musical accomplishments, and which, in the majority of cases, falls to the lot of the young woman." Most of her students were young women, including Helen Porter, whose father was the mayor of Los Angeles. But she taught men and women of all ages; she trained actor

John Wayne Marion Robert Morrison (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), known professionally as John Wayne and nicknamed The Duke or Duke Wayne, was an American actor who became a popular icon through his starring roles in films made during Hollywood's Gol ...

and singers

Bing Crosby Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, musician and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwide. He was a ...

and

Pat Boone Patrick Charles Eugene Boone (born June 1, 1934) is an American singer and actor. He was a successful pop singer in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. He sold more than 45 million records, had 38 Top 40 hits, and appeared in mo ...

as whistlers. By 1916 she was managing the tours of several of her more successful students, including Margaret Gray McKee, Gertrude Willey, Nina Kellogg, Felice Jung, Mary Louise Hand, and Shirley Irvine. In 1918 Agnes Woodward and her "Forty Whistling Girls" entertained at a Red Cross benefit in Los Angeles, adding " Over There" to their program for the occasion. She wrote a textbook on the subject, ''Whistling as an Art'', published in 1923, with later editions in 1925 and 1938.

Personal life

Agnes Woodward died in June 1938, aged 66 years, in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

, California."Miss Agnes Woodward"
''Los Angeles Times'' (June 21, 1938): 18. via

Newspapers.com Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. In November 2018, ...

References

External links

* * Muhammad Khaliluddin
"Agnes Woodward and the California School of Artistic Whistling"
''Phantom Empires'' (May 12, 2017). A blog post about Woodward, with clippings and illustrations.
A 1928 photograph of a recital at the Agnes Woodward School of Whistling, from the Huntington Library and the Pasadena Digital History Collaboration
{{DEFAULTSORT:Woodward, Agnes 1872 births 1938 deaths American women educators Educators from New York (state) Educators from Michigan People from Tecumseh, Michigan People from Waterloo, New York Whistlers