RIP Hildegard

[Bluebear]

If I knew you were going, I'd have baked a cake.



Hildegarde, the "incomparable" cabaret singer whose career spanned almost seven decades, has died. She was 99.

The performer, who was credited with starting the single-name vogue among entertainers, died Friday at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Hospital, said Don Dellair, her longtime friend and manager.

Born Hildegarde Loretta Sell in Adell, Wis., she was known for 70 years simply as "The Incomparable Hildegarde," a title bestowed on her by columnist Walter Winchell.

During the peak of her popularity in the 1930s and '40s, she was booked in cabarets and supper clubs at least 45 weeks a year. She appeared on the cover of Life magazine in 1939, and her recordings sold in the hundreds of thousands. Revlon even introduced a Hildegarde shade of lipstick and nail polish.

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Talk about a glamorous life :^D

[flamingyouth]

2. I've read her memoirs

RIP.

[fudge stripe cookays]

3. She was my grandmother's first cousin!

I tried writing her manager a few years ago to communicate with her, and never heard anything back.

My grandmother's mother was Wilhelmina Sell, and she and Hildegarde's father were brother and sister.

This makes me especially sad, in light of all my genealogy work recently. :-(

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[lpbk2713]

4. IIRC ....

She was a frequent guest on the Jack Paar Tonight show.


RIP

[fudge stripe cookays]

5. Wish I was old enough to have seen that.

My aunt told me that she had had problems with her hands-- maybe helping with the crops or something when she was young, and didn't like the way her hands looked, so that's where she came up with the idea of wearing the long gloves.

During my genealogy hunting in WI, I found a clipping where she sang for the king and queen in the late 30s.

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[KG]

6. thought this was about that other Hildegarde