Singer Peggy King, a Star of Television's Golden Age, Dies at 96
Peggy King, the American singer who was one of the signature voices of television's golden age in the 1950s, died on October 25 at the Saunders House assisted living facility in Wynnewood, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. She was 96. Her publicist, Alan Eicher, confirmed to Variety that she had lived with Alzheimer's disease. King was born on February 16, 1930, in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, to Floyd Henry King and Mary Margaret Finan. She began singing on radio in Cleveland and toured with the big bands of Charlie Spivak, Ralph Flanagan and Ray Anthony.
In 1952 King signed with MGM and sang in Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful. She went on to appear in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955) and played stewardess Janet Turner in the 1957 thriller Zero Hour!. Her jingles for Hunt's tomato sauce brought her to the attention of Columbia Records executive Mitch Miller, who signed her to the label. She released the best-selling albums Wish Upon a Star and Girl Meets Boy, both with Percy Faith and His Orchestra, and scored a hit with the 1954 single "Make Yourself Comfortable."
From 1954 to 1957, King was the resident vocalist on NBC's hit variety program The George Gobel Show, where host George Gobel's nickname for her, "Pretty Perky Peggy King," stuck for the rest of her career. She was nominated for an Emmy Award as best female singer in 1955, according to Variety, and sang the Oscar-nominated song "Count Your Blessings" at that year's Academy Awards. Billboard and Down Beat both named her Best New Singer of 1955-56, and she co-hosted the Emmy Awards telecast in 1958. On February 8, 1960, she received one of the first stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6563 Hollywood Boulevard.
According to JazzTimes, composer Arthur Hamilton wrote "Cry Me a River" specifically for King, but Mitch Miller would not let her record it; the song later became a standard for others. King settled in the Philadelphia area after her marriage and raised a family. She was inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame in 2010. In 2013, at 83, she returned to the stage with the All-Star Jazz Trio, winning strong notices at 54 Below and the Metropolitan Room in New York, and in 2016 she released Songs a la King, her first new album in 36 years. She is survived by her daughter, Suzy Rudofker.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：1955年的Peggy King（右）与专栏作家Sidney Skolsky（公共领域，Wikimedia Commons）。Image: Peggy King (right) with columnist Sidney Skolsky in 1955 (public domain, Wikimedia Commons).
