Claramae Turner

Claramae Turner, the acclaimed and versatile San Francisco Opera singer perhaps most widely known for her heart-melting rendition of "You'll Never Walk Alone" in the 1956 film, "Carousel," has died in Santa Rosa.

Turner, who introduced "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" nearly a decade before Tony Bennett recorded it, was 92.

Born Claramae Haas in the Tulare County town of Dinuba and reared in Eureka, she joined the San Francisco Opera as a member of the chorus a few years before she made her solo debut in 1945. Through the following three decades, she performed more than 100 roles at the War Memorial Opera House and at prominent opera venues across three continents, debuting at the New York City Opera in 1952.

Turner, whose married name since 1950 was Hoffmann, died May 18 in Santa Rosa, her home since the late 1970s.

Actress Shirley Jones, who starred in "Carousel," said Thursday she hasn't seen Turner since the film was made but has never forgotten her, nor her voice.

"When I heard her sing," Jones said from her home in Encino, "I said, 'Oh, no, I don't want to be in this movie with that woman.' Her talent was extraordinary."

The two of them became friends on the set of the movie, adapted from what is considered by many to be the best of the musical stage plays by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein.

Turner "was a lovely person, and she loved what she did," said Jones, who went on to win an Academy Award for her film acting and to win the hearts of millions of TV viewers as the matriarch of "The Partridge Family."

The role of Nettie Fowler allowed Turner to showcase her contralto voice in the singing of "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" and "You'll Never Walk Alone," a sacred and soaring show tune subsequently recorded by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Elvis Presley.

Jones recalled that sometime after the making of "Carousel," she performed the role of Nettie in a summer theater production on the East Coast. She said, "I thought to myself, I'm never going to do this part as well as she (Turner) did."

One of Turner's longtime friends and correspondents is Patrick Summers, principal guest conductor of the San Francisco Opera and artistic director of the Houston Grand Opera. Summers, who shared Turner's appreciation for the starts they received from San Francisco Opera founder Gaetano Merola, said he's aware that Turner is best known for her one, resplendent movie role.

But he said he treasures her most for her "big, burnished contralto voice ... just absolute liquid gold" and for "the wide range of things she sang for the San Francisco Opera."

"She was a real link to a fabled San Francisco Opera past for me," Summers said. "She was very prominent in the company."

He appreciates also that, over the course of Turner's dazzling career, she worked with great talents, including composer Rodgers and conductors Arturo Toscanini, Aaron Copland and Kurt Herbert Adler.

In a recorded performance with the NBC symphony in Carnegie Hall in 1945, Turner sang the role of Urlica in Toscanini's version of Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera" or "A Masked Ball." It was Toscanini's final operatic performance.

"I really treasured her friendship over the years," Summers said. He said Turner did like to recall her one film experience in "Carousel." He said she pretty much needed to just act naturally for the role.

Like Nettie, Summers said, his friend the opera singer was "very down to earth and practical and sweetly philosophical."

In 1952, a friend of Turner, George Cory, was thinking of her when he wrote the music to a nostalgic, away-from-home tune whose lyrics were added by Douglass Cross. Turner often sang the song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," as an encore but never got around to to recording it.

A 1968 article quoted Turner as saying, "My extensive training at San Francisco Opera and the Met (the Metropolitan Opera of New York) was invaluable ... This intensive training enabled me to perform any one of my 100-odd roles with little or no rehearsal.

"I am proud to have been called many times a 'singing actress.'"

Her last performance was in San Francisco in 1974, as the Marquise de Berkenfield, Daughter of the Regiment, with Beverly Sills.

Turner's first marriage, to Robert Turner, ended in divorce. In 1950, she married Frank Hoffmann, an industrial engineer who worked most of his career for Standard Oil. They retired to Oakmont.

Turner's nurse for the past three years, Joan Perry Ryan of Santa Rosa, said that when she retired from opera she taught a little privately and was at Stanford for a couple of terms as head of the Opera Workshop for Falstaff and Figaro.

"She was a judge for Met regional auditions, but mostly it was her beloved husband and dachshund, tennis, garden, organ lessons, birds that claimed her retirement time."

At Turner's request, there will be no services. She will be buried privately in Eureka.