Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields.

Benny (Bennie) Fields (born: Benjamin Geisenfeld) (June 14, 1894 – August 16, 1959) was a popular singer of the early 20th century, best known as one-half of the Blossom Seeley-Benny Fields vaudeville team. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Fields began his career in Chicago, as a singer in Al Tierney's cafe on 22nd Street. The tall young man had a gentle, easygoing way with a song, and held the listeners' rapt attention with tunes like "Melancholy Baby." Singer Blossom Seeley, touring in vaudeville, found Fields in 1921 and hired him to sing—offstage—in accompaniment to her solo numbers, Fields's voice gradually got more attention until he became a partner in the act. The couple was married in 1922-a year after he was hired by Seeley. Fields's laid-back stylings complemented Seeley's vivacious beltings beautifully, and Seeley and Fields became very successful on stage and in recordings. In the late 1920s Warner Bros. filmed their songs and comic patter for Vitaphone short subjects. On radio, Fields was heard on The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air and other shows. Fields and Seeley were well-paid, saving and investing wisely. The couple believed they had no financial worries until the stock market crash of 1929 wiped out everything they had worked for. Vaudeville went into a steep and rapid decline at about the same time as the stock market. Fields and Seeley struggled until he launched a solo career in New York in 1933. Times were hard enough for the couple to file for bankruptcy in New York State in 1936. After Fields became an established star in his own right, Seeley retired in 1936 to simply be Mrs. Benny Fields. He appeared occasionally in films, most notably in The Big Broadcast of 1937, but remained a New York-based performer. He filmed four songs (including two of the Big Broadcast numbers) for Soundies in 1941. In 1936, he recorded 4 sides for Decca and in 1937, he recorded 8 sides for Variety. Benny Fields made a surprise comeback in 1944. The low-budget PRC studio mounted its most ambitious production around Fields, and hired the imaginative Joseph H. Lewis to direct it. The finished musical, Minstrel Man, was a credit to the star, director and studio. Reviewers were delighted by Fields's naturalistic performance—one critic described him as "a talent, voice, and personality the screen's been too long without." Minstrel Man was a personal triumph for Fields, and PRC had planned to follow it up with a true-life film biography of Seeley and Fields. The story would not be told until 1952, however, in the Paramount film Somebody Loves Me (1952) with Betty Hutton and Ralph Meeker. Blossom Seeley came out of retirement during the filming of the movie. Seeley and Fields retired from performing in public, but George Burns fondly recalled a house party he threw in the late 1950s, when he asked the team to do one of their old vaudeville numbers. Seeley and Fields were rather embarrassed, worrying that their act wouldn't interest the many teenagers in the house, but at Burns's urging they sang—and their old magic captured the hearts of the young audience. Following the release of Somebody Loves Me, they recorded three LP albums for the Decca, MGM and Mercury labels and made occasional TV appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Following Fields' 1956 heart attack, the couple had few engagements; Fields' medical expenses wiped out the payments they had received from Somebody Loves Me. In 1959, Fields asked Ed Sullivan, who was arranging a floor show for the Nevada hotel and casino, the Desert Inn for a spot on the bill for himself and his wife. Sullivan agreed; the couple played at the Desert Inn, for a month, making a comeback with the engagement, which ended two weeks before Fields' death in New York City on August 16, 1959.

Blossom Seeley, a song-and-dance headliner in vaudeville and burlesque, died yesterday at the DeWitt Nursing Home, 211 East 79th Street. She was 82 years old. Miss Seeley, whose last pubic appearance was on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on television in 1966, performed for many years with her husband, the late Benny Fields. Their theme songs were “Melancholy Baby” and “Lullaby of Broadway.” Miss Seeley was born in San Francisco on July 16, 1891. By the time she was 10, she was already performing specialty acts at Sid Grauman's San Francisco between school assignments. Her billing—“The Little Blossom.” She later migrated to the burlesque circuit in Los Angeles, where she was seen by Lew Fields, of Weber and. Fields, who signed her to appear with him in “Henpecks” on Broadway in 1911. Her Frisco Toddler” was a showstopper and helped the production run for two years. Soon after she appeared with Al Jolson in “The Whirl of Society.” During the vaudeville years, Miss Seeley toured with the Keith ‐ Albee ‐ Orpheum circuit and was billed as “The Hottest Girl in Town,” a tribute to her smoldering song renditions of such works as “Somebody Loves Me,” “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans,” “Jealous,” “I Cried, for You” and “Smiles, songs with which her name became associated. In 1927, on the 100th anniversary of vaudeville, Miss Seeley and Mr. Fields were selected to headline the Palace bill of celebrities. Miss Seeley married three times. Her first marriage to Joseph Kane, a theatrical manager, ended in divorce in 1913. Later that year she was married to Richard (Rube) Marquard, the major league baseball pitcher, with whom she appeared on stage, That marriage also ended in divorce. She was married to Benny Fields in 1922, after having teamed with him a year earlier in Chicago. Their life together was the subject of the 1952 Paramount film “Somebody Loves Me,” which starred Betty Hutton and Ralph Meeker. Mr. Fields died in 1959. Miss Seeley leaves a son from her second marriage, Richard Marquard Jr. of Utica, Mich. A Requiem Mass will be celebrated tomorrow at 10 A.M. at St. Malachy's Roman Catholic Church, 239 West 49th Street.