Belle Baker | |
|---|---|
 Baker in 1919 | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Bella Becker |
| Born | December 25, 1893 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | April 29, 1957 (aged 63) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Genres | Jazz |
| Occupation(s) | Singer Actress |
| Instrument(s) | Vocals |
| Years active | 1904–1955 |
Belle Baker (born Bella Becker; December 25, 1893[1] in New York City – April 29, 1957, in Los Angeles) was an American singer and actress. Popular throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Baker introduced a number of ragtime and torch songs including Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" and "My Yiddishe Mama". She performed in the Ziegfeld Follies and introduced a number of Irving Berlin's songs. An early adapter to radio, Baker hosted her own radio show during the 1930s. Eddie Cantor called her “Dinah Shore, Patti Page, Peggy Lee, Judy Garland all rolled into one.”[2]
Early life
Baker was born Bella Becker in 1893 to a Russian Jewish family. Baker started performing at the Lower East Side's Cannon Street Music Hall at age 11, where she was discovered by the Yiddish Theatre manager Jacob Adler. She was managed in vaudeville by Lew Leslie, who would become Baker's first husband. She made her vaudeville debut in Scranton, Pennsylvania, at the age of 15. She performed in Oscar Hammerstein I's Victoria Theatre in 1911, although her performance was panned, mainly for her song choices. By age 17, she was a headliner. One of her earliest hits was, "Cohen Owes Me $97".
Broadway and film
Baker had a brief film career as silent film gave way to lavish technicolor musical talkies. She made her film debut starring in the 1929 talkie Song of Love. The film survives and has been screened at film festivals but not released on DVD. Song of Love features two songs performed by Baker written by her husband, "I'm Walking with the Moonbeams (Talking to the Stars)" and "Take Everything But You". She made two more film appearances, in Charing Cross Road (1935) and Atlantic City (1944; in which she performed "Nobody's Sweetheart").
Radio
In 1932, Baker became a regular on Jack Denny's radio program on CBS.[3] She was a guest performer on The Eveready Hour, broadcasting's first major variety show, which featured Broadway's top headliners. Baker continued performing through the 1930s, but limited her performances to radio shows.
Personal life
Baker's first marriage was in 1913, to producer and promoter Lew Leslie. The couple divorced in 1918. In 1919, she married Maurice Abrahams,[4] a successful Russian-American songwriter/composer, who wrote such songs as "Ragtime Cowboy Joe", "He'd Have to Get Under — Get Out and Get Under (to Fix Up His Automobile)", "I'm Walking with the Moonbeams (Talking to the Stars)", and "Take Everything But You". The couple had one child, Herbert Joseph Abrahams, later known as Herbert Baker, who became a screenwriter. After Abrahams' death in 1931, Baker restricted her performing to radio. On September 21, 1937, she remarried, to Elias Sugarman, editor of the theatrical trade magazine, Billboard. The couple divorced in 1941. She made one final television appearance in This Is Your Life in 1955, just two years before her death.
Filmography
- Song of Love (1929)
- Charing Cross Road (1935)
- Atlantic City (1944)
References
- ↑ Although Baker shaved off as many as five years from her age (her gravestone cites 1898), she was born in 1893, as confirmed by the 1915 New York census, which required the censee's age as of June 1, 1915, and lists Belle Leslie, living with her husband Louis and his family, as 21 years of age. She would turn 22 in December 1915.
- ↑ Mordaunt Hall review of Song of Love Archived 2017-05-10 at the Wayback Machine, nytimes.com, November 14, 1929; accessed August 5, 2015.
- ↑ Doran, Dorothy (February 19, 1932). "Belle Baker, Denny Join In Broadcasts". The Akron Beacon Journal. Ohio, Akron. p. 33. Retrieved April 24, 2020.
- ↑ Cullen, Frank; Hackman, Florence; McNeilly, Donald (2007). Vaudeville old & new: an encyclopedia of variety performances in America. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-93853-2. Retrieved April 24, 2020.
Links
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