Shirley Ross (born Bernice Maude Gaunt, January 7, 1913 – March 9, 1975) was an American actress and singer, notable for her duet with Bob Hope, "Thanks for the Memory" from The Big Broadcast of 1938.

This test, a duet with jazz vocalist Harry Barris, was included in MGM's musical-comedy short subject Gentlemen of Polish (1934), starring the comedy team of Al Shaw and Sam Lee.

MGM cast Ross in a number of small parts in films that included Manhattan Melodrama with Clark Gable and William Powell in which, made up to look black, she sang "The Bad in Every Man," an earlier version of "Blue Moon," in a Harlem nightclub.

[a][7] After a career interruption in the making of This Way Please with Buddy Rogers, when she walked off the job, alleging that Jack Benny's wife, Mary Livingstone, was trying to sabotage her scenes,[10][11][12][13] she was cast opposite Hope in The Big Broadcast of 1938.

Their duet, "Thanks for the Memory", became a huge hit and a defining moment for two careers headed in opposite directions – for Hope, a springboard to bigger and better things; for Ross, the pinnacle.

[15] The duet's great success sparked spin-off movies with Bob Hope, Thanks for the Memory (1938) and another called Some Like It Hot (1939; later renamed Rhythm Romance to avoid confusion with the unrelated 1959 feature).

Although Ross would have been willing to play straight drama and had performed well in Prison Wife,[17] Paramount relegated her to supporting roles in two minor romantic comedies, which did nothing for her career, even though one of them (Paris Honeymoon) teamed her once more with Crosby.