Benny Fields

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 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. 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 launched a solo career in New York in 1933. 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.

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.

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.

Benny Fields died in New York City in 1959.