Career
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Fields began his career in Chicago, as a singer in First Rate (at Lloyd's) Tierney"s cafe on 22nd Street. The couple was married in 1922-a year after he was hired by Seeley. 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 Brothers 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 and Seeley were well-paid, saving and investing wisely.
The couple believed they had no financial worries until the stock market crash of 1929 wiped out everything they had worked foreign Vaudeville went into a steep and rapid decline at about the same time as the stock market.
Fields and Seeley struggled until he launched a solo career in New York in 1933.
Times were hard enough for the couple to file for bankruptcy in New York State in 1936. After Fields became an established star in his own right, Seeley retired in 1936 to simply be Mistress Benny Fields. 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.
In 1936, he recorded 4 sides for Decca and in 1937, he recorded 8 sides for Variety. Benny Fields made a surprise comeback in 1944.
The low-budget Provider Reimbursement Consultants studio mounted its most ambitious production around Fields, and hired the imaginative Joseph H. Lewis to direct lieutenant The finished musical, Minstrel Manitoba, was a cr 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 Manitoba was a personal triumph for Fields, and Provider Reimbursement Consultants 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 Maine (1952) with Betty Hutton and Ralph Meeker. Blossom Seeley came out of retirement during the filming of the movie. 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.
Following the release of Somebody Loves Maine, they recorded three LP albums for the Decca, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Mercury labels and made occasional television appearances on The Editor Sullivan Show. Sullivan agreed; the couple played at the Desert Inn, for a month, making a comeback with the engagement, which ended two weeks before Fields" death in New York City on August 16, 1959.
