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Belle Baker (born Bella Becker; December 25, 1893,Although Baker shaved off as many as five years from her age (her gravestone cites 1898), she was born in 1893, as confirmed by the 1915 New York census, which required the censee's age as of June 1, 1915, and lists Belle Leslie, living with her husband Louis and his family, as 21 years of age. She would turn 22 in December 1915. in New York City– April 29, 1957, in Los Angeles) was a American Jews singer and actress. Popular throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Baker introduced a number of ragtime and including Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies" and "My Yiddishe Momme". She performed in the Ziegfeld Follies and introduced a number of Irving Berlin's songs. An early adapter to radio, Baker hosted her own radio show during the 1930s. Eddie Cantor called her “Dinah Shore, Patti Page, Peggy Lee, Judy Garland all rolled into one.” Mordaunt Hall review of Song of Love , nytimes.com, November 14, 1929; accessed August 5, 2015.
Baker started performing at the Lower East Side's Cannon Street Music Hall at age 11, where she was discovered by the Yiddish Theatre manager Jacob Adler. She was managed in vaudeville by Lew Leslie, who would become Baker's first husband. She made her vaudeville debut in Scranton, Pennsylvania, at the age of 15. She performed in Oscar Hammerstein I's Victoria Theatre in 1911, although her performance was panned, mainly for her song choices. By age 17, she was a headliner. One of her earliest hits was "Cohen Owes Me $97".
In 1926, Baker took on the lead role in a play called Betsy. In this production, Baker played the oldest daughter of a Jewish family named the Kitzels. The mother (portrayed by Pauline Hoffman) wouldn't let any of her children get married until Betsy (played by Baker) got married. Legend has it that the production desperately needed a Baker song, and she called Irving Berlin for help. Baker introduced his hit song Blue Skies in Betsy. The song was such a hit that she played it for twenty-four encores on opening night. Blue Skies would later become immortalized by Al Jolson performance of it in the first ever Sound film movie, The Jazz Singer.
Later that year, Baker introduced the song My Yiddishe Momme to the American public. The song was made even more famous by Sophie Tucker and popularized by The Barry Sisters. It was extremely important from a Jewish American standpoint during this time, as it represented internal conflict over assimilation into gentile society. The song was viewed very positively by gentiles and eventually became so popular around the world that it was banned in Nazi Germany; leading Jewish prisoners of concentration camps to sing it. Baker had a brief film career as silent film gave way to lavish technicolor musical film sound film. She made her film debut starring in the 1929 talkie Song of Love. The film survives and has been screened at film festivals but not released on DVD. Song of Love features two songs performed by Baker written by her husband, "I'm Walking with the Moonbeams (Talking to the Stars)" and "Take Everything But You". She made two more film appearances, in Charing Cross Road (1935) and Atlantic City (1944; in which she performed "Nobody's Sweetheart").
In 1935, Baker hosted a show in England to raise money for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution through the United Jewish Appeal. Several years before her death, she performed several songs at the opening of a Congregation Sons of Israel on Lexington Avenue alongside the president of the American Jewish Committee, Irving Miller.
Many of Baker's family later became involved with showbusiness. Her brother, Irving Becker, married stage actress Vinnie Phillips and became a road manager for a production of Tobacco Road. The Broadway actress Marilyn Cooper was her niece.
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