Vickie Henderson

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Vickie Henderson (born Everette Victoria Henderson ; born August 19, 1926 in Alabama , United States ; † August 14, 2015 in Geneva , Switzerland ) was an American dancer , singer and actress . In 1950 she married the Swiss Joseph Loriol.

Career

Victoria Henderson was born in Alabama and grew up in a poor family in Harlem , New York City . She had contact with music at an early age, her father was a singer. In order to finance her singing and dance lessons and to support the family financially, Henderson worked as a lift girl in the Waldorf-Astoria and in the evenings as a dancer in a second-class nightclub. There she was discovered by chance as a singer. First small engagements in the ballet of Katherine Dunham and in the Ziegfeld Theater followed. As a singer and dancer in the musical Finian's Rainbow ( Finian's Rainbow ), which successfully launched in 1947 on Broadway, she came in the same year to Europe.

During a performance in Geneva in 1949, she met and fell in love with the Swiss Joseph Loriol. She stayed in Geneva, where they both married in 1950. Loriol became her manager. The couple had a son, Renato. Exposure to less racial prejudice than was the case in the US in the 1940s and 1950s, Henderson performed in various Swiss nightclubs. Further appearances by the “Black Pearl of Variety” finally followed in all of Western Europe with its own orchestra. Supported by her husband, Henderson appeared in European entertainment films and released records from 1951, mostly as an exotic dancer. The fee at that time could easily compete with that of a Josephine Baker and enabled the singer to live a comfortable life.

In 1959 Henderson had success in Germany with the music film Freddy, the guitar and the sea . Her only German-language single release, The Big Bear Has Seven Little Stars, was a special feature : first, the B-side Ich bin happy mit dir (from the film Freddy, the guitar and the sea ) was listed in the top 10 of the slot machine market's hit list , then a short time later the A-side in the top 30. Thus, with just one single release, she made two listings in the German hit lists.

With her husband, she bought the “Cafe Monique” in Geneva, where she appeared from then on. After the death of her son, Henderson withdrew from show business. She died in Geneva in 2015.

Filmography

literature

  • Moments In World History - From Big Apple to Swiss Club Icon , Documentation, France 2015.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Henderson, Vickie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Henderson, Everette Victoria (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American dancer, singer and actress
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Alabama , United States
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 2015
Place of death Geneva , Switzerland