Tag Archives: style icon

Louise Brooks – Style Icon

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Her style is often copied or emulated or desired, but never improved. She was an original then and an original now.

NAME: Louise Brooks
OCCUPATION: Film Actress
BIRTH DATE: November 14, 1906
DEATH DATE: August 08, 1985
PLACE OF BIRTH: Cherryvale, Kansas
PLACE OF DEATH: Rochester, New York

BEST KNOWN FOR: Louise Brooks was a silent-film actress known for bringing a sense of corrupt sensuality to her roles.

Mary Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985), generally known by her stage name Louise Brooks, was an American dancer, model, showgirl and silent film actress, noted for popularizing the bobbed haircut. Brooks is best known for her three feature roles including two G. W. Pabst films: in Pandora’s Box (1929), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), and Prix de Beauté (Miss Europe) (1930). She starred in 17 silent films and, late in life, authored a memoir, Lulu in Hollywood.

French film historians rediscovered her films in the early 1950s, proclaiming her as an actress who surpassed even Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo as a film icon (Henri Langlois: “There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks!”), much to her amusement. It would lead to the still ongoing Louise Brooks film revivals, and rehabilitated her reputation in her home country. James Card, the film curator for the George Eastman House, discovered Louise living as a recluse in New York City about this time, and persuaded her to move to Rochester, New York to be near the George Eastman House film collection. With his help, she became a noted film writer in her own right. A collection of her witty and cogent writings, Lulu in Hollywood, was published in 1982. She was profiled by the film writer Kenneth Tynan in his essay, “The Girl With The Black Helmet”, the title of which was an allusion to her fabulous bob, worn since childhood, a hairstyle claimed as one of the ten most influential in history by beauty magazines the world over.

“I found that the only well-paying career open to me, as an unsuccessful actress of thirty-six, was that of a call girl…and (I) began to flirt with the fancies related to little bottles filled with yellow sleeping pills.”

Brooks had also been a heavy drinker since age 14, but she remained relatively sober to begin writing about film, which became her second career. During this period she began her first major writing project, an autobiographical novel called Naked on My Goat, a title taken from Goethe’s Faust. After working on the novel for a number of years, she destroyed the manuscript by throwing it into an incinerator.

In an interview with James Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio, Liza Minnelli related her preparation for portraying Sally Bowles in the film Cabaret: “I went to my father, and asked him, what can you tell me about thirties glamour? Should I be emulating Marlene Dietrich or something? And he said no, I should study everything I can about Louise Brooks.”

In 1991 the British new wave group Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark released a single named “Pandora’s Box” as a tribute to Brooks. The video for the single used extensive footage of Brooks from the movie and included a text intro which explained who Brooks was. And, for the 1988 Siouxsie and The Banshees album (Peepshow) and tour, singer Siouxsie Sioux sported a hairdo and costumes in Brooks’s style.

An exhibit titled “Louise Brooks and the ‘New Woman’ in Weimar Cinema” ran at the International Center of Photography in New York City in 2007, focusing on Brooks’ iconic screen persona and celebrating the hundredth anniversary of her birth.

On August 8, 1985, Brooks was found dead of a heart attack after suffering from arthritis and emphysema for many years. She was buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Rochester, New York.

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Cecil Beaton – Style Icon

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Born: January 14, 1904, London
Died: January 18, 1980, Broad Chalke
Parents: Etty Sissons, Ernest Walter Hardy Beaton
Education: St John’s College, Cambridge, Harrow School
Awards: Academy Award for Costume Design, Academy Award for Best Art Direction

Best Known For:  Sir Cecil Beaton was an English fashion photographer. He was also a diarist, interior designer and Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer.

Sir Cecil Beaton was an English fashion photographer. As a child, he adored the picture postcards of society ladies that came with the the Sunday newspaper. In the 1920s, he was hired as a staff photographer for Vanity Fair and Vogue, where he developed a unique style of posing sitters with unusual backgrounds. He was also a diarist, interior designer and Oscar-winning stage and costume designer.

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Colleen Dewhurst – Style Icon

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I was lucky enough to sit in on a Master Class given by Colleen Dewhurst at Interlochen and was blown away by her life and career.  To be honest, I had only known her from the Anne of Green Gables series, but her stories and inspiration that day compelled me to see more.  That voice!  She was an amazing example of how life should be spent.  Ladies and Gentlemen, Colleen Dewhurst.  Style Icon.

Colleen Rose Dewhurst (June 3, 1924 — August 22, 1991) was a Canadian-American actress known for a while as “the Queen of Off-Broadway.” In her autobiography, Dewhurst wrote: “I had moved so quickly from one Off-Broadway production to the next that I was known, at one point, as the ‘Queen of Off-Broadway’. This title was not due to my brilliance but rather because most of the plays I was in closed after a run of anywhere from one night to two weeks. I would then move immediately into another.” She was a renowned interpreter of the works of Eugene O’Neill on the stage, and her career also encompassed film, early dramas on live television, and Joseph Papp‘s New York Shakespeare Festival. She was also renowned for her television work playing Marilla Cuthbert in the Kevin Sullivan TV movie adaptations of the Anne of Green Gables series and her reprisal of the role in the subsequent TV series Road to Avonlea (marketed as just Avonlea in the US).

Her most significant achievement was the 1974 Broadway revival of O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten as the farm girl Josie Hogan opposite Jason Robards’s Jamie. Dewhurst won a Tony Award for her work. Dewhurst played Katharina in a 1956 production of Taming of the Shrew for Papp. She (as recounted in her posthumous obituary in collaboration with Tom Viola) wrote:

With Brooks Atkinson’s blessing, our world changed overnight. Suddenly in our audience of neighbors in T-shirts and jeans appeared men in white shirts, jackets and ties, and ladies in summer dresses. We were in a hit that would have a positive effect on my career, as well as Joe’s, but I missed the shouting.

Dewhurst played Shakespeare’s Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth for Papp and, years later, Gertrude in a production of Hamlet at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park.
Dewhurst and Scott met while working together in 1958, in Children of Darkness, while they were both married to other people. Dewhurst and Scott married and divorced twice. They had two sons, Alexander Scott and actor Campbell Scott. Colleen Dewhurst won two Tony Awards and four Emmy Awards.

She appeared with Ingrid Bergman in a production of O’Neill’s More Stately Mansions on Broadway in 1967. Quintero also directed her in O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night and Mourning Becomes Electra. She appeared in Edward Albee‘s adaptation of Carson McCullers’ Ballad of the Sad Cafe, and she played Albee’s Martha in a Broadway revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf which Albee directed himself. She won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in 1961 for All The Way Home.

She appeared in 1962 as Joanne Novak in the episode “I Don’t Belong in a White-Painted House” in NBC’s medical drama, The Eleventh Hour, starring Wendell Corey and Jack Ging. Dewhurst appeared opposite her then-husband, Scott, in a 1971 television adaptation of Arthur Miller’s The Price, on Hallmark Hall of Fame, an anthology series, and there is another television recording of them together when she played Elizabeth Proctor to his unfaithful John in Miller’s The Crucible (with Tuesday Weld. In 1977, Woody Allen cast her in his film Annie Hall as Annie’s mother.

In 1972 she played a madam, Mrs. Kate Collingwood, in The Cowboys (1972), which starred John Wayne. In 1985, she played the role of Marilla Cuthbert in Kevin Sullivan’s adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s novel Anne of Green Gables, and reprised the role in 1987′s Anne of Avonlea (also known as Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel), and in several episodes of Kevin Sullivan’s Road to Avonlea. Dewhurst died before the character of Marilla could be written out and her final scenes were picked up off the editing-room floor and pieced together for her death scene.

During 1989 and 1990, she appeared in a supporting role on the television series Murphy Brown playing the feisty mother of Candice Bergen’s title character; this role earned her two Emmy Awards.

Dewhurst was president of the Actors’ Equity Association from 1985 until her death from cervical cancer in 1991. Dewhurst’s Christian Science beliefs[citation needed] led to her refusal to countenance any kind of surgical treatment. Maureen Stapleton wrote about Dewhurst:

Colleen looked like a warrior, so people assumed she was the earth mother. But in real life Colleen was not to be let out without a keeper. She couldn’t stop herself from taking care of people, which she then did with more care than she took care of herself. Her generosity of spirit was overwhelming and her smile so dazzling that you couldn’t pull the fucking reins in on her even if you desperately wanted to and knew damn well that somebody should.

Dewhurst was married to James Vickery from 1947 to 1960. Later she was twice married and divorced from stage, film and television actor George C. Scott for a total of approximately 10 years. The couple had two sons, Alexander and Campbell, an actor. She co-starred with Campbell in Dying Young (1991), one of her last performances.

During the last years of her life, she lived on a farm in South Salem, New York, with her partner, Ken Marsolais. They also had a summer home on Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Cole Porter – Style Icon

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NAME: Cole Porter
OCCUPATION: Songwriter
BIRTH DATE: June 09, 1891
DEATH DATE: October 15, 1964
EDUCATION: Yale University, Harvard University
PLACE OF BIRTH: Peru, Indiana
PLACE OF DEATH: Santa Monica, California

Best Known For:  Cole Porter was a U.S. composer and lyricist who created songs like “I Get a Kick Out of You” and his own series of Broadway musicals including Anything Goes.

Cole Porter was born today in Peru, Indiana (1891). He was a composer and lyricist, and he wrote a string of hit songs: “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “Night and Day,” “You’re the Top,” “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Love,” “I’ve got You Under My Skin,” and “Let’s Misbehave.” All of these songs were written within a 10-year period: between his first popular Broadway musical, Paris (1928) — his first musicals had been complete flops — and a terrible riding accident in 1937. Porter was at a party at the New York home of the Countess Edith di Zoppola when his horse rolled and crushed his legs. He claimed that he didn’t realize how badly he was hurt and that while someone ran for help he finished up the lyrics to “You Never Know.” But he was in fact seriously injured — the doctors insisted that his right leg be amputated, maybe his left as well. Porter refused. He preferred to be in intense pain than be missing a leg.

He lived with the pain for more than 20 years, and he continued to write songs, but never at the same rate of success as he had before his accident. In 1958, after 34 operations on his leg, he finally agreed to have it amputated. The playwright Noel Coward went to visit Porter in the hospital, and he said: “He has at last had his leg amputated and the lines of ceaseless pain have been wiped from his face. He is a bit fretful about having to manage his new leg but he will get over that. I think if I had had to endure all those years of agony I would have had the damned thing off at the beginning, but it is a cruel decision to have to make and involves much sex vanity and many fears of being repellent. However, it is now done at last and I am convinced that his whole life will cheer up and that his work will profit accordingly.” But Porter never recovered. He told friends, “I am only half a man now.” And never wrote another song. He died in 1964 at the age of 73.

The critic Alfred Kazin said of Porter: “The wit of his words depended on his ability to raise the audience immediately to his own level — and keep it there. The instant happiness that Porter gave his audience is the kind that becomes history.”

Charles James – Style Icon

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Charles James (18 July 1906 in Sandhurst – September 23, 1978 in New York City) was a fashion designer known as America’s first couturier. He is considered a master of cutting and is known for his highly structured aesthetic.

His father was a British officer and his mother a Chicago ‘patrician’. In 1919 he attended Harrow School, where he met Evelyn Waugh, Francis Rose and, most importantly Cecil Beaton, with whom he formed a longstanding friendship. He was expelled from Harrow for a ‘sexual escapade’.

At the age of nineteen in 1926, Charles James opens his first hat shop in Chicago, using the name of a schoolfriend, ‘Charles Boucherdon’.

In 1928 he left Chicago for Long Island with 70 cents, a Pierce Arrow and a number of hats as his only possessions. He later opened a hat shop above a garage in Murray Hill, New York, beginning his first dress designs.

James showed one of his most successful collections in Paris in 1947. In the 1950s he spent most of his time in New York.

James looked upon his dresses as works of art, as did many of his customers. Year after year he reworked original designs, ignoring the sacrosanct schedule of seasons. The components of the precisely constructed designs were interchangeable so that James had a never-ending fund of ideas on which to draw. He is most famous for his sculpted ball gowns made of lavish fabrics and to exacting tailoring standards, but is also remembered for his capes and coats, often trimmed with fur and embroidery, his spiral zipped dresses, and his white satin quilted jackets.

After the birth of his son, Charles James Jr. in 1956, he also produced a children’s collection.

He designed the interior and several pieces of furniture for the Houston home of John and Dominique de Menil.

After returning to New York City from Paris, Scaasi worked for James for two years. James retired in 1958.

He died alone, of bronchial pneumonia, at the Chelsea Hotel in New York.

Phyllis Diller – Style Icon

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“My mother-in-law had a pain beneath her left breast. Turned out to be a trick knee.” – Phyllis Diller

NAME: Phyllis Diller
OCCUPATION: Film Actress, Comedian, Pianist
BIRTH DATE: July 17, 1917
DEATH DATE: August 20, 2012
EDUCATION: Chicago’s Sherwood Music Conservatory
PLACE OF BIRTH: Lima, Ohio
PLACE OF DEATH: Los Angeles, California
Originally: Phyllis Ada Driver

Best Known For:  First noticed as a contestant on Groucho Marx‘s game show in 1955, Phyllis Diller went on to become a successful comedian, actress and author.

Actress and comedian Phyllis Diller was born in Lima, Ohio in 1917. She was first noticed as a contestant on Groucho Marx’s game show, and went on to become a successful comedian, actress and author, recognizable by her eccentric costumes, overdone makeup and trademark laugh. In 1992, she received the American Comedy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Diller was also an accomplished pianist and author. She died on August 20, 2012, at age 95,  at her home in Los Angeles.
Breakthrough Role

Comedian, actress and author Phyllis Diller was born as Phyllis Ada Driver on July 17, 1917, in Lima, Ohio. Diller was the only child of Frances and Perry Driver. After graduating high school, she continued her studies at Chicago’s Sherwood Music Conservatory for three years, before eloping with Sherwood Diller in 1939. The couple soon moved to California, where they had six children (one of their children died in infancy).

In 1955, while working as a journalist for the San Leandro News-Observer, Diller appeared as a contestant on Groucho Marx’s game show, You Bet Your Life. Her memorable performance on the show sparked the advent of her national exposure. She received an offer to make her comedic debut at The Purple Onion Comedy Club in San Francisco, where she floored the audience with her dynamic one-liners and comical costumes. This success led to future bookings at New York’s Blue Angel, as well as an appearance on The Jack Paar Show.
Comedy Routine

In her monologues, Diller adopted the stage personality of a typical housewife and spoke of topics that affected American suburbia—kids, pets, neighbors and even mothers-in-law. Her most notable routines were filled with anecdotes about her fictitious husband, “Fang,” and her numerous face-lifts. Diller’s delivery was accentuated by her animated facial expressions, eccentric costumes, overdone make-up and signature loud, cackling laugh. During performances, she would often flaunt a cigarette and laugh at her own jokes with her trademark cackle.
Acting Highlights

In 1961, Diller acquired her first minor film role, as Texas Guinan in Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass. She also co-starred in a few low-budget movies with longtime friend and fellow comedian Bob Hope, including Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number (1966), Eight On the Lam (1967) and The Private Navy of Sgt. O’Farrell (1968). Additionally, Diller made recurring appearances on Hope’s annual Christmas Special (1965-94).

Diller’s first stage acting appearance was in The Dark Top of the Stairs (1961). However, her most notable theatre performance was in 1970, when she replaced Carol Channing as Dolly Levi in Broadway’s Hello, Dolly!. After Hello, Dolly!, Diller would not return to the stage until 1988, when she played the vivacious Mother Superior in San Francisco’s Nunsense.
Personal Life and Death

In 1965, Diller ended her 26-year marriage with Sherman Anderson Diller. The two were divorced in September of that year, and Diller hastily married Ward Donovan just one month later. In the late 1960s, Diller focused her creative efforts toward television. She created two poorly received television series: the sitcom The Pruitts of Southampton in 1966, and the variety show The Phyllis Diller Show two years later, in 1968.

In addition to her comedic talents, Diller could boast that she was both an accomplished concert pianist and author. Over a 10-year period, from 1972 to 1982, under the pseudonym “Dame Illya Pillya,” Diller performed as a solo pianist throughout America, with more than 100 symphony orchestras. She published five best-selling books throughout her career, including 1963′s Phyllis Diller Tells All About Fang, 1966′s Phyllis Diller’s Housekeeping Hints, 1967′s Phyllis Diller’s Marriage Manual, 1969′s The Complete Mother and 1981′s The Joys of Aging and How to Avoid Them.

In 1992, Diller received the American Comedy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Diller died on August 20, 2012, at her home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, where she had briefly served as honorary mayor. She was 95 years old, and was survived by three children and several grandchildren. According to an Associated Press article, Diller’s longtime manager, Milton Suchin, said that Diller “died peacefully in her sleep, and with a smile on her face.”

Jacob Lawrence – Style Icon

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I am lucky enough to be able to view this mural in person whenever I want. It is so comforting to know that it is in the convention center.

NAME: Jacob Lawrence
OCCUPATION: Academic, Painter
BIRTH DATE: September 07, 1917
DEATH DATE: June 09, 2000
PLACE OF BIRTH: Atlantic City, New Jersey
PLACE OF DEATH: Seattle, Washington
Best Known For:  Jacob Lawrence was an American painter, and the most widely acclaimed African-American artist of the 20th century. He is best known for his Migration Series.

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Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on September 7, 1917, Jacob Lawrence moved with his parents to Easton, Pennsylvania, at the age of 2. When his parents separated in 1924, his mother deposited him and his two younger siblings in foster care in Philadelphia, and went to work in New York City. When he was 13, Lawrence joined his mother in Harlem.

Lawrence was introduced to art shortly after his arrival, when his mother enrolled him in Utopia Children’s Center, which had an after-school art program. He dropped out of school at 16 but took classes at the Harlem Art Workshop with Charles Aston and frequently visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1937, Lawrence won a scholarship to the American Artists School in New York. When he graduated in 1939, he received funding from the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. He had already developed his own style of modernism, and began creating narrative series, painting 30 or more paintings on one subject. He completed his best-known series, Migration of the Negro or simply The Migration Series, in 1941. The series was exhibited at Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery in 1942, making Lawrence the first African-American to join the gallery.

At the outbreak of World War II, Lawrence was drafted into the United States Coast Guard. After being briefly stationed in Florida and Massachusetts, he was assigned to be the Coast Guard artist aboard a troopship, documenting the experience of war around the world. He produced 48 paintings during this time, all of which have been lost.

When his tour of duty ended, Lawrence received a Guggenheim Fellowship and painted his War Series. He was also invited by Josef Albers to teach the summer session at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Albers reportedly hired a private train car to transport Lawrence and his wife to the college so they wouldn’t be forced to transfer to the “colored” car when the train crossed the Mason-Dixon Line.

Back in New York after his stint in the south, Lawrence continued to paint. He grew depressed, however, and in 1949, he checked himself into Hillside Hospital in Queens, where he stayed for 11 months. He painted as an inpatient, and the work created during this time differs significantly from his other work, with subdued colors and people who appear resigned or in agony.

After leaving Hillside, Lawrence turned his attention to the theater. In 1951, he painted works based on memories of performances at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. He also began teaching again, first at Pratt Institute and later the New School for Social Research and the Art Students League.

In 1971, Lawrence accepted a tenured position as a professor at University of Washington in Seattle, where he taught until he retired in 1986. In addition to teaching, he spent much of the rest of his life painting commissions, producing limited-edition prints to help fund nonprofits like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Children’s Defense Fund and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He also painted murals for the Harold Washington Center in Chicago, the University of Washington and Howard University, as well as a 72-foot mural for New York City’s Times Square subway station.

Lawrence painted until a few weeks before he died, on June 9, 2000.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. – Style Icon

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NAME: John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr.
OCCUPATION: Publisher
BIRTH DATE: November 25, 1960
DEATH DATE: July 16, 1999
EDUCATION: Brown University, New York University Law School
PLACE OF BIRTH: Washington, DC
PLACE OF DEATH: New York

BEST KNOWN FOR: Later the publisher of political magazine George, JFK Jr. was the first child ever born to a president-elect, the son of JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy.

Born November 25, 1960, in Washington, D.C. The first child ever born to a president-elect, Kennedy was the second child born to John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (later Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis). After President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, little “John-John” won America’s hearts in that much photographed moment when, as just a small child, he bravely saluted his father’s casket. With looks inherited from his attractive parents, Kennedy, despite strict protection from his mother, was in the media spotlight his entire life as one of American journalists’ favorite subjects.

After flirting very briefly with a career in acting and graduating from Brown University and New York University Law School, Kennedy worked as an assistant district attorney in New York City and then quit to get into the business of journalism himself. In 1995, he launched the successful, hip political magazine, George. Although he certainly could have had a future in politics, he never entered the political arena, choosing instead to make his own way in the world — in publishing and in public service. (He did, however, leave the door open for running for office later in his life.) Known for his adventurous nature, he nonetheless took pains to separate himself from the more reckless antics and self-destructive impulses of some of the other men in the Kennedy clan.

Named “sexiest man alive” by People magazine in 1988, John F. Kennedy Jr. had been linked with numerous Hollywood celebrities including Madonna, Daryl Hannah, Julia Roberts, Brooke Shields, Sarah Jessica Parker and numerous models. Kennedy broke hearts across America when, in September 1996, he married his “soulmate” and longtime girlfriend Carolyn Bessette. The two shared a loft apartment in New York City’s TriBeCa neighborhood, where Kennedy was often seen roller-blading and biking on the city’s streets.

On July 16, 1999, Kennedy, Bessette-Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, were flying to Martha’s Vineyard on a single engine private plane piloted by Kennedy, en route to his cousin Rory Kennedy‘s wedding in Hyannisport, Massachusetts. When their plane did not arrive as scheduled, massive search parties were sent out to locate the aircraft. Search efforts persisted throughout the following days, initially to no avail. Luggage and debris from the wreckage were found washed ashore the Gay Head section of Martha’s Vineyard, and the three passengers were eventually presumed dead. Across the nation, Americans mourned the loss of the beloved son of one of the country’s most admired families, and shared their sadness in the tragedies that seem to haunt them.

On July 21, search crews recovered the bodies of JFK, Jr., his wife and sister-in-law. The Kennedy and Bessette families planned a burial at sea for all three. A private mass for JFK Jr. and Carolyn, was held at the Church of St. Thomas More on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis worshipped; it was attended by President and Mrs. Clinton.

Kennedy was survived by his uncle, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, and his sister, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, as well as a number of cousins. Struggling from lack of advertising support (although circulation was growing), Kennedy’s George magazine ceased publication in early 2001.

Jack Kerouac – Self Help

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“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.” – Jack Kerouac

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Ella Fitzgerald – Style Icon

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NAME: Ella Fitzgerald
OCCUPATION: Singer
BIRTH DATE: April 25, 1917
DEATH DATE: June 15, 1996
PLACE OF BIRTH: Newport News, Virginia
PLACE OF DEATH: Beverly Hills, California

Best Known For:  Ella Fitzgerald, known as the “First Lady of Song” and “Lady Ella,” was an American jazz and song vocalist who interpreted much of the Great American Songbook.

Born on April 25, 1917, in Newport News, Virginia, singer Ella Fitzgerald was the product of a common-law marriage between William Fitzgerald and Temperance “Tempie” Williams Fitzgerald. Ella experienced a troubled childhood that began with her parents separating just a month after her birth.

With her mother, Fitzgerald moved to Yonkers, New York. They lived there with her mother’s boyfriend, Joseph De Sailva. The family grew in 1923 with the arrival of Fitzgerald’s half-sister Frances. Struggling financially, she helped her family out by working as a messenger “running numbers” and acting as a lookout for a brothel. Her first career aspiration was to become a dancer.

After her mother’s death in 1932, Fitzgerald ended up moving in with an aunt. She started skipping school. Fitzgerald was then sent to a special reform school, but she didn’t stay there long. By 1934, Ella was trying to make it on her own and living on the streets. Still harboring dreams of becoming an entertainer, she entered an amateur contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. She sang the Hoagy Carmichael tune “Judy” and wowed the audience. Fitzgerald performed a second song and went on to win the contest’s $25 first place prize.

That unexpected performance at the Apollo helped set Fitzgerald’s career in motion. She soon met bandleader and drummer Chick Webb and eventually joined his group as a singer. In 1935 Fitzgerald recorded “Love and Kisses” with Webb. Working with Webb, she found herself playing regularly at one of Harlem’s hottest clubs, the Savoy Ballroom. Fitzgerald put out her first number-one hit, 1938′s “A-Tisket A-Tasket,” which she co-wrote. Later that year Ella recorded her second hit, “I Found My Yellow Basket.”

In addition to her work with Webb, Fitzgerald also performed and recorded with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. She had her own side project, too, known as Ella Fitzgerald and Her Savoy Eight. Following Webb’s death in 1939, Ella became the leader of the band, which was renamed Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra. Around this time, Fitzgerald was briefly married to Ben Kornegay, a convicted drug dealer and hustler. They wed in 1941, but she soon had their union annulled.

Going out on her own, Ella Fitzgerald landed a deal with Decca Records. She recorded some hit songs with the Ink Spots and Louis Jordan in the early 1940s. Fitzgerald also made her film debut in 1942′s comedy western Ride ‘Em Cowboy with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Her career really began to take off in 1946 when she started working with Norman Granz. Granz orchestrated the Jazz at the Philharmonic, which was a series of concerts and live records featuring most of the genre’s great performers. Fitzgerald also hired Granz to become her manager.

Around this time, Fitzgerald went on tour with Dizzy Gillespie and his band. She started changing her singing style, incorporating scat singing during her performances with Gillespie. Fitzgerald also fell in love with Gillespie’s bass player Ray Brown. The pair wed in 1947, and they adopted a child born to Fitzgerald’s half-sister whom they named Raymond “Ray” Brown Jr. The marriage ended in 1952.

The 1950s and ’60s proved to be a time of critical and commercial success for Fitzgerald. She even earned the moniker “The First Lady of Song” for her mainstream popularity and unparalleled vocal talents. Her unique ability to mimicking instrumental sounds helped popularize the vocal improvisation of “scatting” which became her signature technique.

In 1955, Fitzgerald began recording for Granz’s newly created Verve Records. She made some of her most popular albums for Verve, starting out with 1956′s Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book. Two years later, Fitzgerald picked up her first two Grammy Awards for two later songbook projects—Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book and Ella Fitagerald Sings the Irving Berlin Song Book. She actually worked directly with Ellington on that album.

A truly collaborative soul, Fitzgerald produced great recordings with such artists as Louis Armstrong and Count Basie. She also performed several times with Frank Sinatra over the years as well. In 1960, Fitzgerald actually broke into the pop charts with her rendition of “Mack the Knife.” She was still going strong well into the ’70s, playing concerts across the globe. One especially memorable concert series from this time was a two-week engagement in New York City in 1974 with Frank Sinatra and Count Basie.

By the 1980s, Fitzgerald began to experience health problems. She had heart surgery in 1986 and then discovered she had diabetes. The disease left her blind, and she had both legs amputated in 1994. She made her last recording in 1989 and her last public performance in 1991 at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Ella Fitzgerald died on June 15, 1996, at her home in Beverly Hills.

In all, Fitzgerald recorded more than 200 albums and some 2,000 songs in her lifetime. Her total record sales exceeded 40 million. Her many accolades included 13 Grammy Awards, the NAACP Image Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

While some critics complained that her style and voice lacked the depth of some her more bluesy counterparts, her success and the respect she garnered from the biggest names in the music industry showed that Fitzgerald was in a class all her own. Mel Torme described her as “the High Priestess of Song” and Pearl Bailey called her “the greatest singer of them all,” according to Fitzgerald’s official website. And Bing Crosby once said, “Man, woman of child, Ella is the greatest of them all.”

Since her passing, Fitzgerald has been honored and remembered in so many ways. The United States Postal Service honored the late singer with an Ella Fitzgerald commemorative stamp celebrating the 90th anniversary of her birth. That same year, the tribute album We All Ella featured such artists as Gladys Knight, Etta James and Queen Latifah performing some of Fitzgerald’s classic songs.

Ella Fitzgerald said, “The only thing better than singing is more singing.”