Hildegarde

Template:Template other Hildegarde Loretta Sell, known as Hildegarde (February 1, 1906 – July 29, 2005) was an American cabaret entertainer, singer and piano player.

During the peak of her career, Hildegarde was popular for her recordings and international appearances on the radio, television and in supper club shows. Among other popular songs, she became well-known for the song "Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup". Performing from the 1920s into the 1980s, she died at age 99 in New York.

Early life

Hildegarde was born Hildegarde Loretta Sell in Adell, Wisconsin, and raised in New Holstein, Wisconsin, as a Roman Catholic in a family of German extraction. She trained at Marquette University's College of Music in Milwaukee in the 1920s, aspiring to become a concert pianist.

Vaudeville and cabaret

Having started in an all male orchestra accompanying silent movies at the Merril Theater in Milwaukee, Hildegarde later worked in vaudeville and traveling shows throughout her career, appearing across the United States and Europe.

She was known for 70 years as The Incomparable Hildegarde, a title attributed to her by columnist Walter Winchell. She was also nicknamed the "First Lady of the Supper Clubs" by Eleanor Roosevelt. Further, she was referred to as a "luscious, hazel-eyed Milwaukee blonde who sings the way Garbo looks".

International career

After earlier engagements in New York City, she and her manager Anna Sosenko traveled to London, where Hildegarde performed at the Café de Paris, a chic supper club for one month. She further developed her stage act in Paris, broadening her repertoire by singing in French, Russian, Italian, and Swedish, cultivating an image of cosmopolitan sophistication. This led to nightclub reviewers doubting, "whether she was an American with a French accent or French with an American accent." Hildegarde later secured prominent engagements in London, performing at events such as the Jubilee celebrations of George V and the coronation of George VI. She also performed extensively for the BBC, making Hildegarde the first American vocalist to obtain such a commitment.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Hildegarde appeared in cabarets and supper clubs for up to 45 weeks a year. Her recordings sold in the hundreds of thousands, and her admirers ranged from soldiers during World War II to King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden and the Duke of Windsor. On some of her recordings, she was accompanied by band leader Carroll Gibbons. During most of the 1940s she appeared on Raleigh Room, an NBC Radio program. Her annual income was reported as $150,000.

A portrait of Hildegarde appeared on the cover of Life magazine in 1939, adding to her popularity. During the late 1940s, Hildegarde performed on a tour across Europe. A practising catholic, she was received by Pope Pius XII at his summer residence, Castel Gandolfo. For her appearances, she wore elegant gowns and long gloves, even when playing the piano: "Miss Piggy stole the gloves idea from me.", she once said. A noted flirt, Hildegarde told risqué anecdotes while giving long-stemmed roses to men in the audience.

Hildegarde has been credited with starting the use of a single name among entertainers. Revlon introduced a lipstick and nail polish color named after her. Investments and work in ads for a bottled-water company, barley vitamins and a bathtub device gave her a comfortable income even after musical tastes changed.

Her song "Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup" was introduced in the 1937 film Love and Hisses. The French herwords in the title, meaning "Darling, I love you very much.", are used as a refrain. It reached # 21 in the 1943 charts and became her signature song. Some of her other well-known titles were the German war-time song "Lili Marleen", which she sung in English, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's "The Last Time I Saw Paris" and Noel Coward's "I'll See You Again". She was among the early entertainers to make appearances on television before the outbreak of the Second World War.

During the Truman and Eisenhower presidemcy, she also performed at the White House. Starting on September 28, 1954, she acted in The Blue Angel TV series. In 1964, she performed a song for the unsuccessful presidential nomination campaign for Margaret Chase Smith; the song was called "Leave It to the Girls", and was written by Gladys Shelley. Her autobiography, Over 50... So What!, was published by Doubleday in 1961. In 1997 Annie Leibovitz photographed Hildegarde for Vanity Fair magazine.

Personal life and death

Hildegarde never married, although she said, "I traveled all my life, met a lot of men, had a lot of romances, but it never worked out. It was always 'hello and goodbye'". She was the business partner and good friend of Anna Sosenko, an aspiring songwriter and her manager, whom she met at a boarding house in Camden, New Jersey, at the beginning of her career. That relationship ended in litigation over the control of receipts from their joint efforts.

Hildegarde died at the age of 99 in a Manhattan hospital on July 29, 2005, of natural causes.

External links

• Biography on MusicBizAdvice.com
• Template:Trim/ Hildegarde at IMDbTemplate:EditAtWikidata
• Biography at BigBands and BigNames.com
• Hear an episode of her radio show, "Hildegarde's Raleigh Room"
• Hildegarde interview at the 1981 Dick Cavett show on YouTube

Archives

• Hildegarde Sell Papers in the Marquette University Archives
• Hildegarde papers, 1936-1978, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts