Pearl Bailey

Description

Pearl Mae Bailey (March 29, 1918 – August 17, 1990) was an American actress and singer.^[1] After appearing in vaudeville, she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946.^[2] She received a Special Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly! in 1968. In 1986, 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 rendition of “Takes Two to Tango” hit the top ten in 1952.

In 1976, she became the first African-American to receive the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on October 17, 1988.

Bailey was born in Newport News, Virginia^[1] to the Reverend Joseph James and Ella Mae Ricks Bailey.^[3] She was raised in the Bloodfields neighborhood of Newport News and graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in nearby Norfolk, the first city in the region to offer higher education for black students. Blues singer Ruth Brown was one of her classmates.

Bailey made her stage-singing debut at the age of 15. Her brother Bill Bailey was beginning his own career as a tap dancer and suggested that she enter an amateur contest at the Pearl Theatre in Philadelphia. Bailey won and was offered $35 a week to perform there for two weeks. However, the theater closed during her engagement and she was not paid.^[3] She later won a similar competition at Harlem‘s famous Apollo Theater and decided to pursue a career in entertainment.

She earned a degree in theology from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. in 1985 at age 67. At Georgetown, she was a student of the philosopher Wilfrid Desan.

Later in her career, Bailey was a fixture as a spokesperson in a series of Duncan Hines commercials, singing “Bill Bailey (Won’t You Come Home).” She also appeared in commercials for Jell-O,^[7] Westinghouse^[8] and Paramount Chicken.

In her later years, Bailey wrote several books: The Raw Pearl (1968), Talking to Myself (1971), Pearl’s Kitchen (1973) and Hurry Up America and Spit (1976). In 1975, she was appointed special ambassador to the United Nations by President Gerald Ford. Her last book, Between You and Me (1989), details her experiences with higher education. On January 19, 1985, she appeared on a nationally televised broadcast gala the night before the second inauguration of Ronald Reagan. In 1988, Bailey received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Reagan.^[9]