Benny Fields

Benny Fields, occasionally billed as "Bennie Fields" (born Benjamin Geisenfeld; June 14, 1894 – August 16, 1959), was a popular singer of the early 20th century, best known as one-half of the Blossom Seeley-Benny Fields vaudeville team.

Early life Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Fields began his career in Chicago, as a singer in Al Tierney's popular café 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 in 1921 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. The couple was married in 1922, a year after he was hired by Seeley. Times were so hard that the couple filed for bankruptcy in New York State in 1936.

Comeback 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), starring Betty Hutton and Ralph Meeker. Seeley came out of retirement during the filming of the movie.