After Pope Francis did New York City, his next stop was Philadelphia, where he was serenaded by the “Queen of Soul,” Aretha Franklin. If Pearl Bailey were alive—she died Aug. 17, 1990—she would have been a better choice, because she launched her fabulous career in entertainment in the “City of Brotherly Love.”
Ironically, it was at the Pearl Theater that Bailey got her start in show business. She had gone to the theater to get her brother Bill—reputedly the originator of the Moonwalk dance that was later popularized by Michael Jackson—who was late coming home for dinner. While waiting for her brother, she entered an amateur contest and won first prize for her version of the ballad “Poor Butterfly.”
Along with her prize of $5, she was also awarded a two-week engagement performing at the theater. Unfortunately, the theater was on the verge of bankruptcy and closing, which meant she received neither the money nor the engagement. Nevertheless, she had found what she wanted to do, and it was only a matter of time before the teenager entered another contest at the Apollo Theater. Again, she was a winner and her career was formally underway.
Born Pearl Mae Bailey March 29, 1918, in Newport News, Va., her father was an evangelical minister. She was 4 when her parents divorced. She moved with her two sisters and brother to Washington, D.C., and later to Philadelphia. It was from performing in her father’s church as a tot, singing and dancing, that she got her introduction to the stage.
In the 1930s, when vaudeville was still providing a few venues, Bailey found her niche and her charisma and versatility conformed perfectly to the bombast and hilarity that was so much in demand at that time. Soon, she embarked on what was commonly called the Chitlin’ Circuit, which took her act into the mining towns of central Pennsylvania, where she earned $15 a week on average. The money was small, but the opportunities were big, and it was during these hurly burly nights that she perfected her singing and dancing.
When World War II erupted, she had already moved up the entertainment ladder to major outlets in big cities, and she was hired by the USO to entertain soldiers based in the United States. This job was the stepping-stone that propelled her into the limelight and top billing. Working at the Village Vanguard, the fabled jazz club in 1944, she was asked by the owner to display more of her contagious personality, loosen up and be herself.
That was all the advice she needed to develop a persona that combined her vocal ability, her graceful moves and a comedic talent to deliver the sharp repartee that would later be her stock in trade. Her style was a mixture of some of the tricks and techniques she had acquired during those vaudevillian days and what would be refined as she progressed toward cabaret.
Toward the end of the war, she had signed on as a stand-in with Cab Calloway and his orchestra. This arrangement was the beginning of a lifelong relationship with the great leader and it would provide her the platform for greater exposure and invitations to musical theater. In 1946, she made her Broadway debut in the all-Black musical “St. Louis Woman.” She had two numbers—“Legalize My Name” and “A Woman’s Prerogative”—both showstoppers that stood out and earned her the prestigious Donaldson Award for the Best Newcomer on Broadway in 1946.
Her star burned even brighter after she appeared in two films, “Carmen Jones” and “Porgy and Bess”—roles in which she stole the show. Another irony would increase her emerging fame when she popularized the song “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home?” which must have had a special meaning for her. She also gathered a gaggle of fans with her versions of “Birth of Blues” and Cole Porter’s sexually charged “Let’s Do It.” Her popularity began to peak when she was invited to perform at President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s second inauguration in 1957.
But her crowning achievement was still a decade away, and it arrived with fanfare when she starred in the musical “Hello, Dolly!” That exquisite timing of hers, the sultry, ribald insouciance and her commanding, statuesque presence all worked to provoke a stack of rave reviews from top theater critics, including Clive Barnes of The New York Times, who wrote, “She took the whole musical in her hands and swung it around her neck as easily as if it were a feather boa.”
For her performance as Dolly, she won a Tony in 1968. There was also a recording of the show that was commercially successful. Her Broadway performances were so successful that she was even given her own television show, which only lasted one season. There were appearances on other shows, as well as a stint on the sitcom “Silver Spoons,” but she was soon beckoned for a larger task, traveling the world, like Satchmo Armstrong, a kind of goodwill ambassador, a role she relished. In 1986, she won a Daytime Emmy award for her performance as a fairy godmother in the ABC Afterschool Special “Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale.”
When she wasn’t standing in front of a large audience, Bailey was sequestered and working on her five books (“Talking to Myself” being the most informative of them) and her degree in theology, which she earned from Georgetown University at the age of 67.
By this time she was a global celebrity, with a tad of notoriety in some communities after she married white drummer Louis Bellson in 1952. They had two adopted children.
“Bailey had suffered from heart trouble as early as the 1960s,” wrote Anne Janette Johnson, “but she seemed in good health in the summer of 1990, when she traveled to Philadelphia for knee surgery. She was recuperating from the operation when she died unexpectedly Aug. 17 in her Philadelphia hotel room.”