Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall

By: May. 17, 2013
Enter Your Email to Unlock This Article

Plus, get the best of BroadwayWorld delivered to your inbox, and unlimited access to our editorial content across the globe.




Existing user? Just click login.

Town Hall was the setting in 1968 of the legendary dual concert of America's leading cabaret performers, the great international club and recording artist Mabel Mercer and the reigning prince of cabaret Bobby Short. In a tribute to these great artists, The Mabel Mercer Foundation presented a lineup of today's leading practitioners of the intimate and enduring art of cabaret. Check out photos from the concert below!

Mabel Mercer graduated from a convent school at 14, and left her native Britain a few years later where she soon became the toast of Paris, gaining the attention and affection of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Cole Porter, whose songs she helped popularized During WWII. Mabel came to New York, where she soon became a favorite of discriminating clubgoers and thrilled a wider audience through her iconic recordings. At the conclusion of a brilliant career, she was honored at the White House in 1983 with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Reagan hailed her as a 'singer's singer and "a living testament to the artfulness of American song." Frank Sinatra once said, "Everything I know I learned from Mabel Mercer."

At age 11, Bobby Short left Danville, Illinois to begin a career as a nightclub performer. After a long apprenticeship in big and small cities Bobby was offered a fill-in job at the Cafe Carlyle, where he remained for an illustrious 35 years, frequently as a right of passage for debutantes and their Ivy League escorts, a habit these young fans continued for the rest of their lives. Fortunately for non- New Yorkers, Bobby also pursued a successful recording career, promoting and preserving the songs of Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Vernon Duke, Harold Arlen and the Gershwins, while also championing the works of African-American composers Eubie Blake, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.

The Mabel Mercer Foundation is located at 160 East 48th Street, Suite 1P New York, NY. For more information, call (212) 980-3026, email info@mabelmercer.org or visit www.mabelmercer.org.

Photo Credit: Stephen Sorokoff

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
KT Sullivan Host

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Rick Meadows Production Stage Manager

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
KT Sullivan

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Larry Woodward

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Tamara Tunie

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
T. Oliver Reid

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Rex Reed

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Rex Reed & Mike Renzi

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Joyce Breach

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Marissa Mulder

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Julie Wilson

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Mark Hummel & Julie Wilson

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Ricky Ritzel & Spider Saloff

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Iris Williams

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Eric Yves Garcia

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Karen Mason

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Karen Mason

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Bill Boggs

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Andrea Marcovicci

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Andrea Marcovicci

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Rick Meadows

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Lumiri Tubo

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Catherine Russell

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Karen Oberlin

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Clint Holmes

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Clint Holmes

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Tanya Holt

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Lauren Fox

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Lauren Fox

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Natalie Douglas

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Eric Comstock

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Barbara Fasano

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Remembering Mabel & Bobby

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
The Town Hall

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Kelly Clinton Holmes

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Eric Yves Garcia, Joyce Breach, Larry Woodard

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
Steve Ross

Photo Coverage: Remembering Mabel & Bobby at Town Hall
KT Sillivan



Videos