Peg LaCentra; Actress and Big Band Vocalist

Peg LaCentra, 86, an actress and big band vocalist known for dubbing the singing voices of actresses Ida Lupino and Susan Hayward. Born Margherita Maria Francesca LaCentra in Boston, she began her career as a radio actress in the 1930s. She joined orchestra leader Artie Shaw after he met her on “The Mell-O-Roll Ice Cream Show,” and recorded with him and with Jerry Sears. She also sang with Benny Goodman’s band. In 1939, she starred in “The Peg LaCentra Show” for NBC radio. Maintaining a commuter marriage in the 1940s, decades before that became commonplace, she broadcast or appeared in New York while her husband, actor Paul Stewart, was in Hollywood making such films as “Citizen Kane” and “Twelve O’Clock High.” He died in 1986. On June 1, as revealed this week( in Los Angeles, of a heart attack.