Search

Blossom Seeley

Blossom Seeley

History

Blossom Seeley was one of the greatest vaudeville singers, an equal in talent and billing to Nora Bayes and Sophie Tucker. Blossom began as a child performer and worked San Francisco's Barbary Coast as a ragtime singer. Her strutting and finger-snapping, syncopated rhythms gave distinction to her act and she was enticed eastward to New York, the center of big-time vaudeville and musical revues. She worked solo in vaudeville and with her husbands. Joe Kane was one and Rube Marquard, the top flight pitcher for the New York Giants was another. Benny Fields came next and he was to be Blossom’s lasting partner on stage and off. Seeley made a couple of films, appeared on radio and seemed to be content to fade away in tune and time with vaudeville. After Benny Field’s early death in 1959, Blossom tried a comeback, appearing on the Ed Sullivan TV show. Although she could still sing well in her seventies and eighties, and was still a captivating performer, her era and her audience were gone.

Profile

Blossom Seeley

Movies

All-Star Vaudeville

All-Star Vaudeville

Herself

A miniature vaudeville show, complete with a title card introducing each act, is presented. First up is The On-Wah Troupe, an East Asian group of contortionists. Next, Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields sing a duet of the song, "Why Don't You Practice What You Preach". Third up, father and son Pat Rooney and Pat Rooney Jr. perform a recitation and dance musing about if they will ever be as clever as their dad. And the last act on the bill is The Runaway Four, a group of comic acrobats.

Singer

The title refers to the business of affable, ambitious bail bondsman (and politically-connected grifter) Bill Bailey, who, in the course of his work, crosses paths with every kind of offender there is, from first-time defendants to career criminals.

Broadway Thru a Keyhole

Broadway Thru a Keyhole

Sybil Smith

Racketeer Frank Rocci is smitten with Joan Whelan, a dancer at Texas Guinan's famous Broadway night spot. He uses his influence to help her get a starring role in the show, hoping that it will also get Joan to fall in love with him. After scoring a hit, Joan accepts Frank's marriage proposal, more out of gratitude than love. The situation gets even stickier when she falls for a handsome band leader during a trip to Florida. Can she tell Frank she's in love with someone else?

Blossom Seeley

Ed Sullivan shows night spots all over New York in this movie, joking and listening to stories the patrons tell.

Blossom Seeley and Bennie Fields

Blossom Seeley and Bennie Fields

Self - Vocals

The curtain opens; behind it are two pianos where Charles Bourne and Phil Ellis, billed as the Music Boxes, are seated playing. After a few bars, Blossom Seeley and Bennie Fields enter - she's in tulle, he's in sport coat, worsted trousers, vest, and tie carrying a cane and straw hat. They do three numbers, "Hello Mr. Bluebird," Irving Berlin's "The Call of the South," and "(A Pretty Spanish Town) On a Night Like This." Between the first two numbers, they kibbutz about southern music, and for the third song, she dons a sombrero and a serape and he sports a guitar and a gaucho hat. There's also a bit of dancing during the third number.