Barbara McNair Passes Away

[Diamond Girl]

Barbara McNair, a performer all her life, dies at 72



By Janine Anderson
Journal Times

RACINE -

Racine native Barbara McNair, who was among the first black female entertainers to gain mainstream popularity, died Sunday at her home in Sherman Oaks, Calif. She was 72.

McNair graduated from Park High School in 1952. She attended the University of California-Los Angeles before moving to New York to pursue her childhood dream of being a performer.

After arriving in the city, McNair supported herself with secretarial work while she auditioned at the city's nightclubs. She said years later that she learned the skills she needed to hold those jobs while she was a student at Park.

Eventually her auditions paid off, and she began appearing in those same nightclubs. From there she landed a recording contract, and before the decade was done she had appeared on several television programs.

In the 1960s, McNair was one of the country's most popular headliners. In 1969, she hosted her own television variety show. That year she also appeared in "Change of Habit," Elvis Presley's last film, and in 1970 appeared opposite Sidney Poitier in "They call me Mister Tibbs!" She performed with Nat King Cole and starred on Broadway.

Jacqueline Gaither, McNair's older sister, last saw her in September. She said they were not surprised by her sister's success and popularity.

"She sang from the time she was 5 years old in churches and then at school," she said. "We always encouraged her. The family encouraged her to go and do that. She had this beautiful voice. The family didn't want it to go to waste. She had voice lessons, music lessons all her life. The family wanted her to use her talent any way that she could."

An engagement in 1957 at the Village Vanguard earned her notices that would lead to her Broadway debut in the short-lived 1958 musical "The Body Beautiful."

Reviewing a nightclub appearance in late 1965, a New York Times writer commented that the "strikingly beautiful" McNair "does not have to depend on looks alone. She is a highly knowledgeable performer who projects an aura of beauty, a warm personality and an appealing sense of fun."

As she gained notice in Hollywood in the late 1960s, she told the Post that a steamy 1968 photo spread she did for Playboy "helped my career immensely."

Also around that time, she joined a Bob Hope tour to entertain servicemen in Vietnam, saying she was thrilled to later meet men who had seen her there. "I don't believe in war for any reason," she told the Post. "I went over there to see what war was like and to comfort the men and I was appalled."

Her career was hampered in 1972, when she was accused of drug possession along with her then-husband, Rick Manzie, after she signed for a package delivered to her dressing room. She was later cleared; Manzie was shot to death in 1976.

"You can spend all this time building something and it can be destroyed in a minute," she told the Post in 1979.

But she still made TV appearances into the 1980s on such shows as "The Jeffersons" and "The Redd Foxx Show."

McNair sang as long as she could, Gaither said, but the cancer - which started in her throat and then spread - ultimately took away her ability to perform.

"She sang until the middle of last year," Gaither said. "At that time she thought that would be her last. The audience enjoyed her, but she did not think she was really doing well at that time. She said that if she couldn't sing any better than that, that would be the last one."

Gaither went to see her sister perform as often as possible.

"I was always there when it was within a hundred miles," she said. "I would go out (to California) once a year, every February, to visit. She was busy singing out there."

Along with Gaither, McNair is survived by her fourth husband, Charles Blecka.

"She had a great resume," Blecka said. "She could have ended up conceited, but nothing ended up that way. She had a special quality that was infectious, that everybody loved."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Barbara McNair career highlights

Music

"Till There Was You" was her first single. The B-side, "Bobby," became a hit. Signed with Motown in 1965, where she recorded and released "You're Gonna Love My Baby"

Television

"The Barbara McNair Show," "The Jeffersons," "The Dean Martin Show," The Steve Allen Show," "The Flip Wilson Show," "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson," Mission: Impossible," "The Mod Squad," "McMillan & Wife," recurring role as Aunt Bettina in "General Hospital"

Film

"Change of Habit," Elvis Presley's last film; "They Call Me Mister Tibbs!" and "The Organization," with Sidney Poitier, sequels to "In the Heat of the Night"

Stage

"The Body Beautiful," "No Strings," and "The Pajama Game" on Broadway; Nat King Cole's tours of "I'm With You" and "The Merry World of Nat King Cole;" appeared in the European tour of "Sophisticated Ladies"

[Diamond Girl]

Barbara McNair
Actress and Motown singer



Published: 07 February 2007
Barbara McNair, singer and actress: born Chicago 4 March 1934; four times married; died Los Angeles 4 February 2007.

"Lenny Bruce used to say that I was a Caucasian and that someone took a paintbrush and painted me brown," the Broadway actress and singer Barbara McNair told a journalist in 1968: "White people are not aware that negroes look all kinds of different ways. We don't all have wide noses and full lips."

McNair was born in Chicago in 1934 but the family soon moved to Racine, Wisconsin. She was encouraged by her parents to sing and often took solos at church services and in school productions. She studied at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, but her start in show business was by no means academic.

She sang standards in clubs in Greenwich Village and then made an impression on the syndicated Arthur Godfrey's Talent Show. She made her début on Broadway in The Body Beautiful (1958), the same year that she started to make records. Apart from "Bobby" (1958), her singles met with little success.

In 1963 McNair received good notices when she took over from Diahann Carroll in the Broadway musical No Strings, but she received racist taunts in the touring production as the show called for her to kiss a white man. She appeared in the television series Dr Kildare in 1964 and for several years she made guest appearances in TV dramas such as Hogan's Heroes, McMillan and Wife and Mission: Impossible.

When in 1965 Berry Gordy Jnr wanted to add middle-of-the-road sales to his Tamla-Motown labels, he signed McNair, Tony Martin and Billy Eckstine. McNair revealed that she was well capable of being a standard Motown performer, but Gordy refused her insidiously catchy "Baby A Go-Go". McNair released two fine albums, Here I Am (1966) and The Real Barbara McNair (1969), but many tracks lingered in the vaults, including a whole album of Smokey Robinson songs.

Although she did not have any commercial success with Motown, "You're Gonna Love My Baby" and "You Could Never Love Him" became favourites on the UK Northern Soul scene. A double album of released and unissued material, The Ultimate Motown Collection (2003), showed the quality of her work. Motown could have done more as she had a US TV series, The Barbara McNair Show (1969), with such guests as Johnny Mathis, B.B. King and Bob Hope, with whom she toured in Vietnam.

Her nude appearance in the film If He Hollers Let Him Go (1968) caused controversy as it was featured in a Playboy photo-spread. By way of contrast, her next film, Change of Habit (1969), featured her as a nun helping a doctor, improbably played by Elvis Presley. She appeared as Sidney Poitier's wife in Call Me MISTER Tibbs! (1970) and the sequel, The Organisation (1971). In 1973 she returned to Broadway for a revival of The Pyjama Game.

The year before, McNair had signed for a package in her dressing-room and it contained drugs. It appeared that her then husband, Rick Manzie, was involved in dealings with the Mob and, after he was murdered in 1976, McNair found it difficult to get work.

In recent years, she had been performing in night-clubs and opening for Bob Newhart. She also appeared in a touring tribute to Duke Ellington, Sophisticated Ladies.

Spencer Leigh

[Diamond Girl]

Singer-actress Barbara McNair dies at 72


By Dan Whitcomb
Mon Feb 5, 7:50 PM ET

Singer and actress Barbara McNair, who starred opposite Elvis Presley and Sidney Poitier and became one of the first black women to host her own television variety show, has died at 72, her husband said on Monday.

McNair died on Sunday after a long battle with throat cancer, husband Charles Blecka told Reuters. McNair, who started singing in church as a girl, was still performing as recently as late last year.

"She was the strongest person I knew," Blecka said. "She was powerful in a strong way. If she set her sights to do something, she did it and did it in a dignified way."

McNair broke into show business as a nightclub singer and had nearly a two-decade recording career but she parlayed her early fame into a series of TV appearances and ultimately became better known as an actress.

After making her feature film debut in the 1968 crime drama "If He Hollers Let Him Go," she went on to star along with Mary Tyler Moore and Jane Elliott opposite Presley in his last movie, 1969's "Change of Habit." McNair, Moore and Elliott all played nuns and Presley portrayed a doctor.

McNair may have been best known in movies for her role as Poitier's wife in the 1970 classic "They Call Me Mister Tibbs!" and its 1971 sequel "The Organization."

She hosted a syndicated musical variety series, "The Barbara McNair Show" in 1969 when few black women were given such opportunities. Entertainers who appeared on the show during its brief run included Tony Bennett, Sonny and Cher and Bob Hope.

"A lot of people think celebrity comes with a burden," said Blecka, who also served as McNair's manager. "Barbara never did. Along with her inner strength she had this ability to just accept everybody, in all walks of life. Ask anybody in the business, she was one of the most wonderful people you'd ever want to come across."

McNair also appeared on Broadway in productions of "The Body Beautiful," "No Strings" and "The Pajama Game."

Acting roles dwindled for McNair in the 1970s and '80s but she continued to sing at nightclubs and cabarets and made occasional TV appearances on shows such as "The Jeffersons" and the "Redd Foxx Show."

[Diamond Girl]

Singer-actress Barbara McNair dies at 72 By JACOB ADELMAN, Associated Press Writer
Mon Feb 5, 6:08 PM ET



Barbara McNair, the pioneering black singer-actress who hosted her own TV variety show and starred with Sidney Poitier in the early 1970s, has died. She was 72. McNair died Sunday in Los Angeles after a battle with throat cancer, her sister, Jacqueline Gaither, said.

"She was very family oriented," Gaither said. "She was more than just a star or a famous personality. She was a person of her own."

Gaining fame in the 1960s as a nightclub singer, McNair graduated to film and television as opportunities were opening up for black women late in the decade. She made her Hollywood acting debut in 1968 in the film, "If He Hollers, Let Him Go."

She later starred with Elvis Presley in his 1969 film "Change of Habit" and as Poitier's wife in the 1970 film "They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!"

She found movie acting "a more rewarding kind of work than singing," she told The Washington Post in 1969. "When I'm working in a club, I must go from one song to another rapidly and I don't have much time to express myself emotionally. In a movie, you can concentrate on one scene at a time."

She hosted television's "The Barbara McNair Show," a syndicated musical and comedy program, from 1969 to 1972.

As a singer, one of her biggest hits was "You Could Never Love Him." She started out as a jazz singer but later branched out, adding show tunes and the Beatles' "Yesterday" to her repertoire.

On Broadway, McNair replaced Diahann Carroll in Richard Rodgers' "No Strings" in 1963, and 10 years later co-starred with Hal Linden in a revival of "The Pajama Game."

Gaither said her sister seemed headed for a career in show business from the time she was a girl in Racine, Wis.

"She sang from the time she was five years old in churches and then at school," Gaither told the Racine Journal Times. "We always encouraged her."

McNair went to the University of California, Los Angeles, before moving to New York City to pursue her dream of becoming an entertainer.

An engagement in 1957 at the Village Vanguard earned her notices that would lead to her Broadway debut in the short-lived 1958 musical "The Body Beautiful."

Reviewing a nightclub appearance in late 1965, a New York Times writer commented that the "strikingly beautiful" McNair "does not have to depend on looks alone. She is a highly knowledgeable performer who projects an aura of beauty, a warm personality and an appealing sense of fun."

As she gained notice in Hollywood in the late 1960s, she told the Post that a steamy 1968 photo spread she did for Playboy "helped my career immensely."

Also around that time, she joined a Bob Hope tour to entertain servicemen in Vietnam, saying she was thrilled to later meet men who had seen her there. "I don't believe in war for any reason," she told the Post. "I went over there to see what war was like and to comfort the men and I was appalled."

Her career was hampered in 1972, when she was accused of drug possession along with her then-husband, Rick Manzie, after she signed for a package delivered to her dressing room. She was later cleared; Manzie was shot to death in 1976.

"You can spend all this time building something and it can be destroyed in a minute," she told the Post in 1979.

But she still made TV appearances into the 1980s on such shows as "The Jeffersons" and "The Redd Foxx Show." Her sister said she sang professionally until the middle of last year, when the spreading cancer hurt her ability to perform.

Along with Gaither, McNair is survived by her fourth husband, Charles Blecka.

"She had a great resume," Blecka said. "She could have ended up conceited, but nothing ended up that way. She had a special quality that was infectious, that everybody loved."

(Rewrites throughout to correct that 'Body Beautiful' was a musical sted play, add detail on Broadway career, later TV work, quote from husband, minor recasting.)

[antceleb12]

When I first saw this, I was in absolute shock ... I still cannot believe she is no longer with us ...

RIP

[Diamond Girl]

February 6, 2007
Barbara McNair, 72, a Singer, Actress and Host of a TV Show, Dies



By MARGALIT FOX
Barbara McNair, a cabaret singer, actress and television personality of the 1960s who was noted as much for her stunning appearance as for her versatile voice, died on Sunday in Los Angeles. She was 72.

The cause was throat cancer, Ms. McNair’s sister, Jacqueline Gaither, told The Associated Press yesterday.

One of the few African-American television hosts of the period, Ms. McNair had her own syndicated variety series, “The Barbara McNair Show,” broadcast from 1969 to 1971. She made at least a half-dozen records, including several for the Motown label.

If critics did not enshrine her in the top echelon of American popular singers, Ms. McNair, who continued performing until shortly before her death, nevertheless retained a devoted following. Reviewing one of her performances in The New York Times in 1982, John S. Wilson described Ms. McNair as “a gorgeous looking woman with a warm, easy, communicative personality and a voice that can range from softly intense ballads to the edges of gospel, to crisp and rhythmic comedy or to a saloon singer’s belt.” He added: “Her hour in the spotlight passes pleasantly and quickly. But when it is all over, one is not left with any sense of her identity.”

Barbara Joan McNair was born on March 4, 1934 (some sources give the year as 1939), and reared in Racine, Wis., where she sang in church as a child. By the time she was a teenager, she dreamed of singing in nightclubs and pored over biographies of Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine in the hope of discovering how they had managed to do just that.

In the mid-1950s, after studying briefly at the Racine Conservatory and University of California, Los Angeles, Ms. McNair settled in New York, where she found work as a typist. Her break came when she sang at the Village Vanguard, which led to a role in the Broadway musical “The Body Beautiful,” which ran for two months in 1958.

Her other Broadway credits include “No Strings” (1962), in which she replaced Diahann Carroll as the female lead, and a 1973 revival of “The Pajama Game.”

Ms. McNair also had roles in several films, among them “If He Hollers, Let Him Go!” (1968), and “They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!” (1970), a sequel to “In the Heat of the Night,” the last two starring Sidney Poitier. She made many television appearances on “McMillan & Wife,” “The Mod Squad,” “General Hospital” and other shows.

Ms. McNair’s career suffered after she and her husband, Richard Manzie, were charged in 1972 with heroin possession; she was later cleared of the charge.

Ms. McNair was married four times and twice divorced; her third husband, Mr. Manzie, was found shot to death in 1976.

In addition to her sister, Ms. Gaither, she is survived by her husband, Charles Blecka, The Associated Press said.

[timmy84]

Barbara was a pretty woman. RIP.

[fantagurl]

A beautiful "Diva" who paved a way for today`s African American female entertainers. Barbara will be missed.

[Kay]

I was very saddened when I heard this news

Barbara was talented, beautiful and so much more. I hope she rests in peace