HAPPY BIRTHDAY, VIVIENNE SEGAL
(April 19, 1897 - December 29, 1992)

Born in Philadelphia, where she studied voice, Ms. Segal made her operatic debut in 1915, singing the title role in Carmen at the Academy of Music there.  One year later she was starring in The Blue Paradise at the Casino Theater in New York City. After a two year tour, she appeared in many reviews, musicals and operettas including The Yankee Princess and also appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies (1924).

The roles capitalized on her fresh-faced beauty and sweet voice. "Just because I was little and could sing and wasn't too bad to look at, I was called a prima donna and was cast repeatedly in musical comedies as the fair young girl who was good and noble and got what she deserved." However audiences in the 1920s and 1930s doted on her performances in The Desert Song, The Chocolate Soldier, The Three Musketeers and No, No Nanette.

She eventually went on strike to protest the saccharine roles she was given. In 1938, the lyricist Lorenz Hart came to the rescue, offering her the role of a cynical countess in I Married An Angel on Broadway. "He was the only one who really got me out of a rut of playing sweet-faced ingenues and taught me how to play comedy."

Her breakthrough role occurred  two years later as the hard-boiled Vera Simpson in Pal Joey. Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times critic wrote, "In a singularly sweet voice she sings some scabrous lyrics by Lorenz Hart to one of Richard Rodgers' most haunting tunes." She introduced the showstopping number, Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, a song that described her love for the younger man. When she reprised her role in Pal Joey in 1952, she was named best actress in a musical by the New York Drama Critics.