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Legendary Cabaret Star Hildegarde Passes Away at 99

By: Aug. 01, 2005
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Hildegarde, the doyenne of cabaret singers who was dubbed "The Incomparable" by Walter Winchell and whose career spanned seven decades, has passed away at the age of 99; she died on July 29th.

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The star was a glamorous mainstay of the café society of the thirties, forties and beyond. Playing to the well-dressed pleasure-seekers of that somewhat vanished world, she became famous for crooning the sophisticated songs of Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Rodgers and Hart, Kurt Weill and others in supper clubs and cabarets; she would sometimes accompany herself on the piano and offer witty, self-effacing banter between musical numbers ("Darling, Je Vous Aime" was her signature song). In later years, she continued her cabaret engagements, released many albums and appeared on TV specials. She was additionally a radio star and toured as Solange LaFitte in a national company of Follies in the 70s.

Hildegarde, whose name and image smacked of the European, was actually born as Hildgarde Loretta Sell in Adell, Wisconsin in 1906. The star would later count Irving Berlin, the late Bobby Short, Liberace, The Duke of Windsor and King Gustaf of Sweden as fans. According to the London Times, "her career truly went into orbit when (he) demanded that she return to the Club Casanova." Liberace stated (according to The Associated Press) that "I used to absorb all the things she was doing, all the showmanship she created. It was marvelous to watch her, wearing elegant gowns, surrounded with roses and playing with white gloves on. They used to literally roll out the red carpet for her."

Hildegarde started out playing piano for silent movie and vaudeville theatres before she moved to New York and became a song-plugger for Berlin. Anna Sosenko, who made the move with her, would become her manager and song-writing partner as well as her lifetime companion. Appearing in Gus Edwards' touring revue Stars on Parade, he lopped off her last name and she soon was appearing in the elegant cabarets of New York, London and Paris, to where she would relocate in 1933 and where the alleged incident with the King of Sweden would occur. She moved back to New York after making a splash in London.

As well as for her glamor, Hildegarde was known more for her clear diction as a singer and direct delivery of songs than she was for her actual singing talent. As the Times writes, "the clubs she appeared in became less glitzy and her earlier records were reissued on nostalgia labels. However, like the lady in the Sondheim musical, she was still there, a remote and rather overpraised legend, but a legend nonetheless." In her prime, Hildegarde (who pioneered the one-name trend for singers) was booked into clubs for 45 weeks a year, appeared on the cover of Life magazine and had Revlon lipstick and nail polish shades introduced in her honor. Her autobiography Over 50...So What! was published in 1961.





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