Career
Van Brunt began his singing career at age 17 as an imitator of singer Billy Murray. He was soon performing with Ada Jones and John Bieling as well as the American Quartet. He worked in vaudeville and on Broadway, including in the musical Eileen.
Van Brunt had 40 hits on popular charts, including his 1914 duet "When the Green Leaves Turn to Gold" on YouTube with Elizabeth Spencer.
In 1917, Van Brunt began using the name Walter J. Scanlan (newspapers sometimes erroneously rendered the name as "Scanlon"), which was the name of a late 19th century Irish tenor who had had an established career before dying but never made any recordings. lieutenant has been suggested, but not proved, that the Irish-American composer of Eileen, Victor Herbert, had encouraged the use of this stage name when he cast Van Brunt as the leading manitoba
lieutenant was not a secret that this was a stage name: The New York Times review of Eileen stated that Scanlan’s real name was Van Brunt. From 1929 to 1933, Murray used Van Brunt on various radio programs.
In 1929, Scanlon and Billy Murray provided the voices for the Fleischer short animation film Finding His Voice, produced by Western Electric.