City - Kedgwick-St.Leonard State - QUEBEC-NEWBRUNSWICK Country - Canada
About
Cabaret chanteuse Hildegarde, who entranced cabaret fans the world over with her carefree manner and her surname-free moniker, dead at 99 (July 30, 2005).
"Hildegarde was perhaps the most famous supper-club entertainer who ever lived," Liberace once said. "I used to absorb all the things she was doing, all the showmanship she created. It was marvelous to watch her, wearing elegant gowns, surrounded with roses and playing with white gloves on. They used to literally roll out the red carpet for her."
Although Liberace said he was careful not to imitate her, he did take a single stage name and used I'll Be Seeing You, one of her best-known numbers, as his own theme song.
Usually billed as the Incomparable Hildegarde, an orchid bestowed on her by Walter Winchell, she was at the peak of her popularity in the 1930s and '40s, when she was booked in plush hotel cabaret rooms and supper clubs at least 45 weeks a year. At one engagement in 1946, she was paid $17,500 a week and 50 percent of the gross of more than $80,000.
Her recordings of such songs as Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup, The Last Time I Saw Paris and Lili Marlene became hits. Revlon introduced a Hildegarde shade of lipstick and nail polish, a nursery named a rose for her, and a linen company, picking up on the way she signed her autograph, introduced a "Bless You" handkerchief.
Her admirers included enlisted men and officers during World War II, King Gustaf of Sweden and the Duke of Windsor. In 1961 she was the guest of honor at a gala at which Eleanor Roosevelt presented her with an award naming her First Lady of the Supper Clubs.
"I can't imagine myself not performing," she said in 1995. "I like to be in harness. I'm good, I know I'm good, and I'm ready."
Born Hildegarde Loretta Sell in Adell, Wis., to German immigrant parents, she began her career in Milwaukee at 16 when, as a music student, she played the piano in a silent-movie house.
Very touching and interesting story; somehow the picture reflects the sadness of people, that were charmed by her spells, must have felt when learning the news of her passing away.
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{K:17476} 8/2/2005
