Biography
Born on 19 April 1897 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, Vivienne Segal died on 29 December 1992 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She ranked among the foremost figures in American musical theatre, first earning recognition as an operetta performer before advancing into the refined territory of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. After formal vocal training she performed the lead in Carmen at a neighborhood opera venue, then reached Broadway for the first time in 1915 with The Blue Paradise. Her father had helped finance the production; when the scheduled soprano faltered during rehearsals, the eighteen-year-old Segal stepped in with little warning. The substitution proved memorable, and she introduced the waltz “Auf Wiedersehn” by Sigmund Romberg and Herbert Reynolds. Following the show’s success and its subsequent tour, her next appearances—My Lady’s Glove in 1917 and the Charles B. Dillingham–Florenz Ziegfeld revue Miss 1917—proved less rewarding, yet she secured stronger parts in Jerome Kern’s Oh, Lady! Lady!! (1918), Rudolph Friml’s The Little Whopper (1919), and the adaptation of Emmerich Kálmán’s Die Bajadere retitled The Yankee Princess (1922). Later vehicles such as Adrienne (1923), Ziegfeld Follies (1924), Florida Girl (1925), and Castles In The Air (1926) preceded her triumph in The Desert Song (1926), where she delivered “Romance” and the title number alongside Robert Halliday. Two years afterward she portrayed Lady Constance opposite Dennis King’s D’Artagnan in Friml’s The Three Musketeers, after which she stayed away from Broadway for roughly a decade. During that interval she headed regional stagings of No, No, Nanette and Music In The Air, maintained a steady radio presence, and appeared in several screen operettas; the most notable was the two-colour Technicolor Viennese Nights (1930), co-starring Alexander Gray and Walter Pidgeon. Its Romberg–Oscar Hammerstein II score featured “I Bring A Love Song,” “You Will Remember Vienna,” and “Here We Are.” While in Hollywood she encountered Rodgers and Hart, who engineered her 1938 return to Broadway in I Married An Angel; there she performed “A Twinkle In Your Eye,” “Did You Ever Get Stung?” with Dennis King and Charles Walters, “I’ll Tell The Man In The Street” with Walter Slezak, and “Spring Is Here” with King. In 1940 she created Vera Simpson, the mature socialite ensnared by Gene Kelly’s character, in the Rodgers and Hart work Pal Joey, delivering the song “Bewitched.” Her participation in the 1943 revival of the team’s earlier A Connecticut Yankee proved especially notable because Hart supplied the new number “To Keep My Love Alive” expressly for her; it is widely regarded as his final lyric. Hart died five days after the 17 November 1943 opening. Segal next appeared in the Tchaikovsky-style operetta Music In My Heart (1947) and the spectral Great To Be Alive! (1950). She reentered New York with distinction in the 1952 Pal Joey revival, earning heightened praise for Vera; Harold Lang played Joey—his understudy was Bob Fosse—in a run that reached 542 performances, surpassing the original, and the production survives on a notable cast recording. Pal Joey marked Segal’s final Broadway appearance, although she remained active on television, notably in Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Studio One.