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Chez Paree
The Chez Paree was a Chicago nightclub known for its glamorous atmosphere, elaborate dance numbers, and top entertainers. It operated from 1932 until 1960 in the Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago at 610 N. Fairbanks Court. The club was the epitome of the golden age of entertainment, and it hosted a wide variety of performers, from singers to comedians to vaudeville acts. A "new" Chez Paree opened briefly in the mid-1960s on 400 N. Wabash Avenue and was seen in the film '' Mickey One'' with Warren Beatty. History The Chez Paree was initially opened in 1932 by Mike Fritzel and Joe Jacobson. After reported financial problems operating the club, it was sold to a group of partners in 1949; Jack Schatz, Don Jo Medlevine, Al Kaiser (not the MLB player), and Dave Halper. Chez Paree was housed on the third floor of a loft building designed in 1917 by the architects Marshall and Fox. Marshall and Fox are best known for the Drake Hotel and Blackstone Hotel. During the Chez Paree's ear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marshall And Fox
Marshall and Fox was a United States architectural firm based in Chicago from 1905 to 1926. The principals, Benjamin H. Marshall and Charles E. Fox, designed a number of significant buildings of many types in Chicago and other cities, but they were best known for luxury hotels and apartment buildings. Partners Benjamin Henry Marshall Benjamin Marshall (May 5, 1874 – June 19, 1944) was a native of Chicago. His formal education did not extend beyond his years at a private preparatory academy, the Harvard School, in then-suburban Kenwood. Impressed by the buildings being erected for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 near his south side home, the young Marshall decided on a career in architecture. He became an apprentice of the firm of Marble and Wilson from 1893 to 1895. At Marble's death he became a partner in the firm, and then in 1902 established his own practice. One of his earliest commissions was destroyed a month after its completion in an event remembered as on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polly Bergen
Polly Bergen (born Nellie Paulina Burgin; July 14, 1930 – September 20, 2014) was an American actress, singer, television host, writer and entrepreneur. She won an Emmy Award in 1958 for her performance as Helen Morgan in '' The Helen Morgan Story''. For her stage work, she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance as Carlotta Campion in ''Follies'' in 2001. Her film work included '' Cape Fear'' (1962) and ''The Caretakers'' (1963), for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. She hosted her own weekly variety show for one season (''The Polly Bergen Show''), was a regular panelist on the TV game show '' To Tell the Truth,'' and later in life had roles in ''The Sopranos'' and '' Desperate Housewives''. She wrote three books on beauty, fashion, and charm. She is also the inspiration behind Mother Goose in '' The Land of Stories''. Early life Bergen was born in K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dorothy Collins
Dorothy Collins (born Marjorie Chandler; '''' (July 23, 1994), p. 27 November 18, 1926 – July 21, 1994) was a Canadian-American singer, actress, and recording artist. Radio and TV Collins was born in , Canada, and adopted her stage name in her mid-teens. As a youngster, she sang on radio stations in Windsor and Detroit. In 1940, at age 14, she and her family were introduced to bandleader/composer in Chicago. ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American singer, jazz pianist, and actor. Cole's music career began after he dropped out of school at the age of 15, and continued for the remainder of his life. He found great popular success and recorded over 100 songs that became hits on the pop charts. His trio was the model for small jazz ensembles that followed. Cole also acted in films and on television and performed on Broadway. He was the first African-American man to host an American television series. He was the father of singer Natalie Cole (1950–2015). Biography Early life Nathaniel Adams Coles was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 17, 1919. He had three brothers: Eddie (1910–1970), Ike (1927–2001), and Freddy (1931–2020), and a half-sister, Joyce Coles. Each of the Coles brothers pursued careers in music. When Nat King Cole was four years old, the family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rosemary Clooney
Rosemary Clooney (May 23, 1928 – June 29, 2002) was an American singer and actress. She came to prominence in the early 1950s with the song " Come On-a My House", which was followed by other pop numbers such as " Botch-a-Me", " Mambo Italiano", "Tenderly", "Half as Much", " Hey There", " This Ole House", and " Sway". She also had success as a jazz vocalist. Clooney's career languished in the 1960s, partly because of problems related to depression and drug addiction, but revived in 1977, when her '' White Christmas'' co-star Bing Crosby asked her to appear with him at a show marking his 50th anniversary in show business. She continued recording until her death in 2002. Early life Rosemary Clooney was born in Maysville, Kentucky, the daughter of Marie Frances (née Guilfoyle) and Andrew Joseph Clooney. She was one of five children. Her father was of Irish and German descent, and her mother was of English and Irish ancestry. She was raised Catholic. When Clooney was 15, her moth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kitty Carlisle
Kitty Carlisle Hart (born Catherine Conn; September 3, 1910 – April 17, 2007) was an American actress, singer, and spokeswoman for the arts. She was the leading lady of the Marx Brothers movie '' A Night at the Opera'' (1935) and was a regular panelist on the television game show '' To Tell the Truth'' (1956-1978). She served 20 years on the New York State Council on the Arts. In 1991, she received the National Medal of Arts from President George H. W. Bush. She was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1999. Early life Kitty Carlisle was born as Catherine Conn (pronounced Cohen) in New Orleans, Louisiana, of German-Jewish heritage. Her grandfather, Ben Holzman, was the mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, and a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War. He had been a gunner on the , the Confederate ironclad warship that fought the at the Battle of Hampton Roads. Her father, Joseph Conn, MD, was a gynecologist who died when she was ten years old. Her mother, H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cab Calloway
Cabell Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, conductor and dancer. He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalist of the swing era. His niche of mixing jazz and vaudeville won him acclaim during a career that spanned over 65 years. Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the most popular dance bands in the United States from the early 1930s to the late 1940s. His band included trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Jonah Jones, and Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon "Chu" Berry, guitarist Danny Barker, bassist Milt Hinton, and drummer Cozy Cole. Calloway had several hit records in the 1930s and 1940s, becoming known as the "Hi-de-ho" man of jazz for his most famous song, " Minnie the Moocher", originally recorded in 1931. He reached the '' Billboard'' charts in five consecutive decades (1930s–1970s). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Busse
Henry Busse Sr. (May 19, 1894 – April 23, 1955) was a German-born jazz trumpeter. A 1948 review in ''Billboard'' magazine said that Busse had "a keen sense of musical commercialism". Early life Born May 19, 1894, in Magdeburg, Germany, to a generational German Band family, Henry Busse studied violin and then trumpet (after a finger he had broken was set incorrectly) under his Oompah Band leader uncle. In 1912, following numerous failed attempts, at age 18, Busse successfully ran away from the family farm outside of Magdeburg, Germany, where he had been forced to play trumpet in his uncle's band. Henry initially "jumped ship" in New York City, landing in the German ghettos there. Rousted by the police for sleeping in Grand Central Station, unable to speak English, he found a job on a boat heading to California. He acquired some English on his trip. 1916 found Busse in Hollywood working as an extra in Keystone Cop films and playing trumpet in a movie theater pit band. (Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joyce Bryant
Joyce Bryant (October 14, 1927 – November 20, 2022) was an American singer, dancer, and civil rights activist who achieved fame in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a theater and nightclub performer. With her signature silver hair and tight mermaid dresses, she became an early African-American sex symbol, garnering such nicknames as "The Bronze Blond Bombshell", "The Black Marilyn Monroe", "The Belter", and "The Voice You'll Always Remember". Bryant left the industry in 1955 at the height of her popularity to devote herself to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. A decade later, she returned to show business as a trained classical vocalist and later became a vocal coach. Early life Joyce Bryant, the third of eight children, was born in Oakland, California, and raised in San Francisco. Her father, Whitfield W. Bryant (1904–1993), worked as a chef for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Her mother, Dorthy Constance Withers ''(maiden;'' 1907–1995), was a devout Seventh-day Adventi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carol Bruce
Carol Bruce (born Shirley Levy; November 15, 1919 – October 9, 2007) was an American band singer, Broadway star, and film and television actress. Early years Bruce was born Shirley Levy in a Jewish family, in Manhattan, to Beatrice and Harry Levy.> She had a sister, Marilyn. Because of her family's moving, she attended Jamaica High School, Girls' High School, and New Utrecht High School before graduating from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, New York. Although she studied violin for eight years, she never took singing lessons. Singing Bruce began her career as a singer in the late 1930s with Larry Clinton and his band. She sang with Ben Bernie's orchestra in 1940-1941. Stage Bruce made her Broadway debut in '' Louisiana Purchase'', with songs by Irving Berlin, who discovered her at a nightclub in Newark, New Jersey. She was the first actress to play the role of Julie in a Broadway production of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's '' Show Boat'' since the 1932 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teresa Brewer
Teresa Brewer (born Theresa Veronica Breuer; May 7, 1931 – October 17, 2007) was an American singer whose style incorporated pop, country, jazz, R&B, musicals, and novelty songs. She was one of the most prolific and popular female singers of the 1950s, recording nearly 600 songs. Early life Brewer was born in Toledo, Ohio, the eldest of five siblings. Her father was a glass inspector for the Libbey Owens Company (now part of Pilkington Glass), and her mother was a housewife. Her father was from Germany. Her mother's family had a background in Hungary and Belarus. Career An agent, Richie Lisella, heard her sing and took her career in hand, and soon she was signed to a contract with London Records. In 1949 she recorded the song Copenhagen (a jazz perennial) with the Dixieland All-Stars. For the B side she recorded the song "Music! Music! Music!". Unexpectedly, it was not the A side but the B side which took off, selling over a million copies and becoming Teresa's signature song ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bobby Breen
Isadore Borsuk (November 4, 1927 – September 19, 2016), better known as Bobby Breen, was a Canadian-born American actor and singer. He was a popular male child singer during the 1930s and reached major popularity with film and radio appearances. Early life Breen was born Isadore Borsuk on November 4, 1927 (according to some sources he was born in 1928) in Montréal, Canada, the son of Hyman (Chaim) and Rebecca Borsuk. His parents were poor Jewish immigrants from present-day Ukraine. They, along with Breen's three older siblings (Gertrude, Sally, and Michael), migrated from Kiev to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1927. Soon after, they relocated to Toronto. His singing talent as a boy soprano was discovered at age three by his sister Sally, herself an aspiring musical student who was several years his senior. While their parents did not show any particular interest, Sally decided to help him achieve stardom. With the assistance from her music teacher, Breen got a chance to perform ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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