4/3/2023 0 Comments Pearl baileyIn 1970, President Nixon named her America’s ″ambassador of love″ to the world. performance of ″Hello, Dolly 3/8″ she was joined onstage by then-President Johnson and his wife. Navy personnel on ships there.Īt a Washington D.C. In 1988 she took a spin around the Persian Gulf to visit U.S. servicemen in 1941 and had been a staple performer of the United Service Organizations - better known as the USO - since then. ″She was concerned about world politics and the demise of humanity in America, where children can be killed in the home and the womb and what has happened to family life,″ he said. Irwin, in Los Angeles, said he spoke to Miss Bailey by telephone two days ago and spent two hours discussing some of the world’s problems. In 1988 she told officials of the World Health Organization she wanted to dedicate her life to fighting AIDS. She was a special delegate to the United Nations under the Ford, Reagan and Bush administrations. Later Miss Bailey became involved in public service activities. ″She was Pearlie Mae to my husband and me,″ she said. ″She was so sophisticated and witty and funny. Lorraine Gordon, widow of nightclub owner Max Gordon, said Miss Bailey broke into show business in the early 1940s at the two clubs. Louis Woman,′ and won the 1946 Donaldson Award as Broadway’s best newcomer. She paid her dues as a chorus girl in Philadelphia night clubs, and also sang and danced in Pennsylvania coal-mining towns for $15 a week and tips.Īfter World War II, she began major New York night club engagements at the Village Vanguard and the Blue Angel. By the age of 3 she was singing and dancing in his church. Miss Bailey credited her father’s revivalist church services for building her rhythm and harmony. Ancestors on both sides of the family included Creek Indians. She was the youngest of four children born to a Virginia minister and Ella Mae Bailey. Louis Blues,″ ″Row, Row, Row,″ and ″That’s Good Enough for Me.″ Her standbys included ″Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home,″ ″St. I laugh at people who call me an actress.″įlipping a feather boa or swathed in chinchilla, ablaze with rhinestones and jewels, Miss Bailey was famous onstage for her throwaway style of singing, a mumbling growl laced with husky patter. I tell stories to music and, thank God, in tune. ″I’m not a comedienne,″ she once told an interviewer, ″I call myself a humorist. ″Her talent was unique and enduring and her warmth was felt by everyone in the audience.″īut Bailey, known as Pearlie Mae to the world and Dick to her closest family, considered herself foremost a singer. ″The entertainment world has lost one of the most creative performers of our time,″ said Carol Channing, who first played ″Dolly″ on Broadway in 1964. Perhaps best-known for playing Dolly in the black version of the musical ″Hello, Dolly 3/8″ in the late 1960s, she also enjoyed a long film career, with her movies including ″Carmen Jones″ and ″Porgy and Bess.″ 29, 1918, and moved with her family as a child to Washington and later Philadelphia, where she made her debut at age 15, winning an amateur contest by singing ″Poor Butterfly.″ She was born in Newport News, Va., on Mar. She then planned to return home to Arizona with her husband, jazz drummer Louis Bellson.īailey, who has been performing 57 of her 72 years, was one of the few entertainers who could still be called a trouper in the classic sense. She left Pennsylvania Hospital on July 30, intending to continue visiting two sisters for a week while undergoing physical therapy. Last month Miss Bailey underwent surgery to replace her arthritic left knee with a metal and plastic joint. ″When people say, ‘Pearl, where did you get you style?’ I tell them: ’I have no style. ″I’m more of a philospher than a jazz singer,″ she said in a June interview with The New York Times. Miss Bailey, a gifted singer with a ready smile and eloquent hands, put audiences at ease with a warm, friendly personal style that translated from the nightclub stage and Broadway to film and television. ″She was a very spiritual woman and she never recognized color. ″Pearl Bailey was the mother of the world,″ said Stan Irwin, her manager for 25 years. ″I’ve lost a co-worker and a wonderful person. ″I have lost one the the greatest friends I’ve ever had in my life,″ said veteran song-and-dance man Cab Calloway.
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