Pearl Bailey

Pearl Mae Bailey was an American actress, singer, comedian, and author born on March 29, 1918, in Newport News, Virginia, to the Reverend Joseph James Bailey and Ella Mae Ricks Bailey. The family relocated to Washington, D.C. when Bailey was young, and following her parents' divorce she moved to Philadelphia to live with her mother. At fifteen, Bailey made her stage-singing debut after her brother Bill Bailey, a tap dancer, encouraged her to enter an amateur contest at the Pearl Theatre in Philadelphia. She won and was offered $35 a week for a two-week engagement, though the theater closed before she was paid. A subsequent victory at the Apollo Theater in Harlem led her to commit to a career in entertainment.

Bailey began performing in Philadelphia's Black nightclubs during the 1930s before expanding to other venues along the East Coast. In 1941 she toured the country with the USO, entertaining American troops during World War II, and afterward settled in New York. Her nightclub work brought her into professional contact with entertainers including Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington. In 1946 she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman, earning a Donaldson Award as the best Broadway newcomer that year. She went on to appear in Arms and the Girl and Bless You All before starring in House of Flowers.

The most celebrated chapter of Bailey's Broadway career began in 1967, when she and Cab Calloway headlined an all-Black cast production of Hello, Dolly! The touring version drew such strong audiences that producer David Merrick brought it to Broadway, where it played to sold-out houses and reinvigorated the long-running musical. Bailey received a Special Tony Award for her performance in the title role. RCA Victor released an original-cast album of that production, the only recording of the score to include an overture written specifically for the recording. She returned to Broadway in 1975 to reprise the lead role in another all-Black production of Hello, Dolly!, extending her association with the show across nearly a decade.

Beyond Broadway, Bailey built a substantial career in television and film. Early in the television era she guest starred on CBS's Faye Emerson's Wonderful Town, and from January through May 1971 she hosted her own ABC variety series, The Pearl Bailey Show, whose guests included Lucille Ball, Bing Crosby, and Louis Armstrong. In 1976 she provided a voice for the animated film Tubby the Tuba, and in 1981 she appeared in Disney's The Fox and the Hound. That same year she won a Daytime Emmy Award for her performance as a fairy godmother in the ABC Afterschool Special Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale. Her recording career also produced commercial success; her rendition of "Takes Two to Tango" reached the top ten in 1952.

Bailey accumulated a range of honors across her lifetime. In 1968 she received the Bronze Medallion, the highest civilian award conferred by New York City. In 1975 President Gerald Ford appointed her special ambassador to the United Nations, a position she held under three presidents, and she appeared in a campaign advertisement for Ford during the 1976 election. President Richard Nixon had previously designated her the nation's "Ambassador of Love" in 1970. In 1976 Bailey became the first African American to receive the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, and that same year she won the Coretta Scott King Award for her children's book Duey's Tale. On October 17, 1988, President Ronald Reagan presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Bailey was also a prolific author. Her books include the autobiography The Raw Pearl, published in 1968, followed by Talking to Myself in 1971, Pearl's Kitchen in 1973, Hurry Up America and Spit in 1976, and Between You and Me in 1989, which drew on her experiences pursuing higher education. She earned a degree in theology from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1985 at the age of 67, completing the degree over seven years as a student of philosopher Wilfrid Desan.

On November 19, 1952, Bailey married jazz drummer Louie Bellson in London. Bellson was six years her junior and white, and interracial marriages were uncommon at the time; Bellson's father was reportedly opposed to the union because of Bailey's race. The couple remained married until Bailey's death. They adopted a son, Tony, in the mid-1950s, and a daughter, Dee Dee Jean Bellson, was born on April 20, 1960. Bailey died on August 17, 1990, at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. An autopsy determined the cause of death was the narrowing of a coronary artery, a condition she had lived with for more than thirty years. She is buried at Rolling Green Memorial Park in West Chester, Pennsylvania. A library in her hometown of Newport News, Virginia, bears her name.