Blossom Seeley

Born on 16 July 1891 in San Francisco, California, USA, and passing away on 17 April 1974 in New York City, New York, USA, Blossom Seeley began performing while still in junior school, appearing in local theatres with speciality routines. After relocating to Los Angeles she took to the burlesque stage, where impresario Lew Fields discovered her and cast her in his Broadway production Henpecks, which opened in 1911. Her vigorous, syncopated delivery created an immediate sensation and contributed to the show’s extended engagement; that momentum carried her into the 1912 edition of The Whirl Of Society alongside Al Jolson.

Performing independently, she held her own against established headliners such as Sophie Tucker and earned both her nickname “The Hottest Girl in Town” and a weekly salary of $1,500, a remarkable figure for the decade. Among the numbers she introduced or helped popularize were “Somebody Loves Me,” “Way Down Yonder In New Orleans,” “I Cried For You,” “Smiles,” “Alabamy Bound,” “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby,” and “Chicago,” the last becoming a hit for her in 1922.

Seeley entered into three marriages: first to her manager Joe Kane from October 1911 until January 1913; next, from March 1913 to 1920, to New York Giants pitcher Richard “Rube” Marquard, with whom she had a son; and finally, in 1921, to her accompanist Benny Fields. The couple headlined at New York’s Palace Theatre during the 1927 centenary celebration of vaudeville and brought further attention to “Melancholy Baby” and “Lullaby Of Broadway.” Together they also filmed the Vitaphone short Blossom Seeley And Benny Fields. Their story reached the screen in 1952 with the biopic Somebody Loves Me, featuring Betty Hutton and Ralph Meeker.

The pair continued recording and broadcasting through the 1950s until Fields’s death in 1959. Seeley thereafter made occasional appearances on radio and television, including a spot on The Ed Sullivan Show, and kept performing into her seventies and eighties.