Mary Wells

Mary Wells

Detroit-born (in 1943) Mary Wells was one of the first stars of the soon-to-be-legendary Motown Records, and while she became one of the label's superstars, she had very, very difficult early years that many other people would not have been able to overcome. As a child she contracted spinal meningitis, resulting in temporary paralysis, hearing loss and partial blindness in one eye. When she regained her health she had to learn how to walk all over again. Fortunately, however, she did regain her hearing and eyesight. At ten years of age she began singing in Detroit-area clubs and talent contests. When she was 17 she wrote a song she wanted to give to Jackie Wilson, a favorite singer of hers. Motown head Berry Gordy was holding open auditions at his studio and Mary showed up with the song, "Bye Bye Baby", and performed it for him. Gordy not only bought the song but signed her to a recording contract, and instead of giving the song to Jackie Wilson, it became Mary's first single, in 1961. It landed in the top 50 on the R&B charts. Gordy set her up with legendary songwriter/producer Smokey Robinson and together they came out with a stream of big hits: "The One Who Really Loves You" (#8), "You Beat Me to the Punch" (#9) and "Two Lovers" #7). Mary embarked on a series of very successful US and European tours. In 1964 she came out with her most famous--and successful--song: "My Guy", which reached #1 on the US pop charts. She became the first Motown artist to have a #1 song on that label, and in fact she was the first Motown artist to have a #1 song on any of the Motown family of labels (Motown, Gordy, Tamla). She sang a duet with Marvin Gaye, "Once Upon a Time", which charted at #17. Mary was at the top of her career by this time. The Beatles said that she was their favorite American singer and invited her on their tour of England. She went, and upon her return she cut an album called "Love Songs to the Beatles". In 1964 Mary was approached by 20th Century-Fox Records and offered a contract of several hundred thousand dollars to leave Motown and sign with them. She took them up on their offer and left Motown, but she didn't have the same degree of success that she had with Motown. She left Fox after a year, and wound up recording for such labels as Atlantic, Atco, Jubilee and Reprise. Her personal life was almost as turbulent as her professional one. She divorced her first husband and married Cecil D. Womack, the brother of singer Bobby Womack, but that marriage ended in divorce also. In the 1970s and '80s she toured the US on the oldies circuit and developed a very loyal following. In 1990 she was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx, which left her unable to sing. Since she had no health insurance, she was financially ruined by the cost of treatment for her condition. Many of her colleagues in the music industry, including such stars as Martha Reeves, Rod Stewart and Bruce Springsteen, provided financial assistance. The experience affected her deeply, and she traveled to Washington, DC, to testify before Congress on the need for funding for cancer research. In 1992 Mary caught pneumonia and was admitted to the hospital, where she died on July 28. She was interred in a cemetery in Glendale, California. She was 48 years old.
Mary Wickes

Mary Wickes

From the grand old school of wisecracking, loud and lanky Mary Wickes had few peers while forging a career as a salty scene-stealer. Her abrupt, tell-it-like-it-is demeanor made her a consistent audience favorite on every medium for over six decades. She was particularly adroit in film parts that chided the super rich or exceptionally pious, and was a major chastiser in generation-gap comedies. TV holds a vault full of not-to-be-missed vignettes where she served as a brusque foil to many a top TV comic star. Case in point: who could possibly forget her merciless ballet taskmaster, Madame Lamond, putting Lucille Ball through her rigorous paces at the ballet bar in a classic I Love Lucy (1951) episode? Unlike the working-class characters she embraced, this veteran character comedienne was actually born Mary Isabelle Wickenhauser on June 13, 1910, in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of a well-to-do banker. Of Irish and German heritage, she grew into a society débutante following high school and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in political science. She forsook a law career, however, after being encouraged by a college professor to try theater, and she made her debut doing summer stock in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The rest, as they say, is history. Prodded on by the encouragement of stage legend Ina Claire whom she met doing summer theater, she transported herself to New York where she quickly earned a walk-on part in the Broadway play "The Farmer Takes a Wife" starring Henry Fonda in 1934. In the show she also understudied The Wizard of Oz (1939)'s "Wicked Witch" Margaret Hamilton, and earned excellent reviews when she went on in the part. Plain and hawkish in looks while noticeably tall and gawky in build, Wickes was certainly smart enough to see that comedy would become her career path and she enjoyed showing off in roles playing much older than she was. New York stage work continued to pour in, and she garnered roles in "Spring Dance" (1936), "Stage Door" (1936), "Hitch Your Wagon" (1937), "Father Malachy's Miracle (1937) and, in an unusual bit of casting, Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre production of "Danton's Death". All the while she kept fine-tuning her acting craft in summer stock. A series of critically panned plays followed until a huge door opened for her in the form of Miss Preen, the beleaguered nurse to an acid-tongued, wheelchair-bound radio star (played by the hilarious Monty Woolley) in the George S. Kaufman/Moss Hart comedy "The Man Who Came to Dinner"; for once, it was Wickes doing the cowering. The play was the toast of Broadway for two wacky years and she went on tour with it as well. She also become a Kaufman favorite. Hollywood took notice as well, and when Warner Bros. decided to film the play, it allowed both Wickes and Woolley to recreate their classic roles. The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), which co-starred Bette Davis and Ann Sheridan, was a grand film hit and Wickes was now officially on board in Hollywood, given plenty of chances to freelance. At Warners she lightened up the proceedings a bit in the Bette Davis tearjerker Now, Voyager (1942) as the nurse to Gladys Cooper. Elsewhere, she traded quips with Lou Costello as a murder suspect in the amusing whodunit Who Done It? (1942); played a WAC in Private Buckaroo (1942) with The Andrews Sisters; and dished out her patented smart-alecky services in both Happy Land (1943) and My Kingdom for a Cook (1943). Wickes returned to Broadway for a few seasons, often for Kaufman, and did some radio work as well, but returned to Hollywood and played yet another nurse in The Decision of Christopher Blake (1948), a part written especially for her. She appeared with Bette Davis for a third time in June Bride (1948), finding some fine moments playing a magazine editor. Wickes went on to perform yeoman work in On Moonlight Bay (1951) and its sequel, By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953); I'll See You in My Dreams (1951); White Christmas (1954) and The Music Man (1962), the last as one of the "Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little" gossiping housewives of River City. Television roles also began filtering in for Wickes she continued to put her cryptic comedy spin on her harried housekeepers, teachers, servants and other working commoner types. She played second banana to a queue of comedy's best known legends in the 1950s and 1960s, notably Lucille Ball (who was a long-time neighbor and pal off-screen), Danny Thomas, Red Skelton, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Jimmy Durante, Peter Lind Hayes and Gertrude Berg. Her stellar work with Berg on The Gertrude Berg Show (1961) garnered Wickes an Emmy nomination. Among the Baby Boom generation, she may be best remembered as Miss Cathcart in Dennis the Menace (1959). In later years her gangly figure filled out a bit as she continued to appear here and there on the small screen in both guest star and series' regular parts. Later in life she enjoyed a bit of a resurgence. Recalled earlier for her Sister Clarissa in the madcap comedy films The Trouble with Angels (1966) and its sequel, Where Angels Go Trouble Follows! (1968), both with Rosalind Russell, She donned the habit again decades later as crabby musical director Sister Mary Lazarus in the box-office smash Sister Act (1992) and its sequel, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993). She appeared in Postcards from the Edge (1990) as Meryl Streep's grandmother, and in Little Women (1994) as the matriarchal Aunt March. True to form, the last role in which she appeared was voicing the gargoyle "Laverne" in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), which was released after her death. The never-married Wickes died in 1995 after entering the hospital with respiratory problems. She suffered a broken hip from an accidental fall and complications quickly set in following surgery. She was 85 years young.

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