Hildegarde

Dubbed "the most famous supper-club performer who ever lived" by no less than Liberace, cabaret icon Hildegarde headlined nightclubs across the globe for close to seven decades, along the way igniting the now-common vogue for single-named celebrity. She was born Hildegarde Loretta Sell in Adell, WI, on February 1, 1906 -- her mother was an organist and the director of the church choir -- and raised from the age of 12 in Milwaukee, beginning her professional music career four years later as the house pianist at a local cinema. After studying music at Marquette University, Hildegarde spent two years as a member of a vaudeville troupe, followed by a stint as an accompanist-for-hire behind a series of singers. While living in Camden, NJ, she befriended budding songwriter Anna Sosenko, and agreed to sing Sosenko's compositions during meetings with publishers. Eventually, Hildegarde landed work as a song plugger for Irving Berlin as well, but Sosenko would prove the primary architect of her career, and the two women lived and worked together for close to a quarter century. Following an audition for his "Stars on Parade" revue, impresario Guy Edwards convinced Hildegarde to drop her surname for performances -- he also helped the singer land her first major headlining appearance at London's Café du Paris. The performance was not a success, but it nevertheless inspired Hildegarde and Sosenko to travel to the real Paris to study cabaret. They spent much of the early '30s in France, and by the end of their three-year stay Hildegarde learned to sing in French, Italian, Russian, and Swedish -- moreover, her studies of diction helped eliminate the remaining vestiges of her German accent. But most of all, in Paris she created the image that would become her signature -- clad in haute...