GREAT FEMALE SINGERS: Tammy Grimes

Here are several songs performed in her unique style by the veteran singer and actress Tammy Grimes.

Often thought to be British, Grimes is in fact an American who owes her accent to her birth into a prominent New England family, though the unique husky timbre of her voice is her own. Her father managed a country club, and she was a debutante who came out into Boston society at age 17. She wanted to become an actress, however, and studied drama at Stephens College in Missouri, then went to New York, where she continued her training at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre.

Known for a speaking voice that has been compared to a buzz saw, a "lyric baritone" singing voice that one critic called "a low, throaty quiver, a hum that takes wings", and "the stage personality of a daffy but endearing pseudo-English eccentric", Grimes made her debut on the New York stage at the Neighborhood Playhouse in May 1955 in Jonah and the whale. She made her Broadway stage debut as an understudy for Kim Stanley in the starring role in Bus stop in June 1955. In 1956, she appeared in the off-Broadway production, The littlest revue, and in 1959 had the lead role in the Broadway production of Noël Coward's play Look after Lulu!, after she was discovered in a nightclub by the playwright.

She starred in the 1960 musical comedy The unsinkable Molly Brown for which she won a Tony Award (best featured actress in a musical) for what The New York Times called her "buoyant" performance as a rough-hewn Colorado social climber. She portrayed the title character, a Western mining millionairess who survived the sinking of the Titanic. In 1964, she appeared in the episode The he-she chemistry of Craig Stevens's CBS drama Mr. Broadway. She made two appearances on the early 1960s TV series Route 66.

On May 16, 1960, Grimes acted and sang as Mehitabel in an abridged version of the musical Archy and Mehitabel as part of the syndicated TV anthology series Play of the Week presented by David Susskind. The cast included Bracken and Jules Munshin. Grimes was originally chosen to play the part given to Elizabeth Montgomery in the hit television situation comedy Bewitched, but was let out of her contract when Noël Coward asked her to star in High spirits, a Broadway musical directed by Coward based on his play Blithe spirit.

In 1966, Grimes starred in her own ABC television series, The Tammy Grimes Show, in which she played a modern-day heiress who loved to spend money.

Returning to the Broadway stage in 1969 after almost a decade of performing in what The New York Times called "dubious delights", Grimes appeared in a revival of Noël Coward's Private lives as Amanda, winning the Tony Award for best actress. Clive Barnes in The New York Times review called her performance "outrageously appealing. She plays every cheap trick in the histrionic book with supreme aplomb and adorable confidence. Her voice moans, purrs, splutters; she gesticulates with her eyes, almost shouts with her hair. She is all campy, impossible woman, a lovable phony with the hint of tigress about her, so ridiculously artificial that she just has to be for real."

During her career, she spent several seasons at the Stratford Festival of Canada in Stratford, Ontario and has appeared in a number of television series and motion pictures. Grimes has also entertained at various New York City night clubs and recorded several albums of songs; she also recited poetry as part of a 1968 solo act in the Persian Room of the Plaza Hotel. Her voice can be heard in romantic duets on some of Ben Bagley's anthology albums of Broadway songs under his Painted Smiles record label. In 1982, she hosted the final season of CBS Radio Mystery Theater.

In 1974 Grimes provided the voice for Albert, the cerebral-minded mouse who doesn't believe in Santa Claus, in the animated Rankin-Bass annual television Christmas special, Twas the night before Christmas. In 1980, she starred in the original Broadway production of 42nd Street. In 2003, Grimes was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. She also appeared in the rotating cast of the off-Broadway staged reading of Wit & wisdom.

In December 2003, Grimes was invited by The Noel Coward Society to be the first celebrity to lay flowers on the statue of Sir Noël Coward at The Gershwin Theatre in Manhattan to celebrate the 104th birthday of "The Master". In 2004 she joined the company of Tasting memories, a "compilation of delicious reveries in poetry, song and prose", with a starry rotating cast including Kitty Carlisle Hart, Rosemary Harris, Philip Bosco, Alvin Epstein, Joy Franz and Kathleen Noone.

In 2005 Grimes worked with director Brandon Jameson to voice UNICEF's multi-award winning tribute to Sesame workshop. Two years later, in 2007, she returned to the cabaret stage in a critically acclaimed one-woman show. Around this time, she was voted as Vice-President of The Noel Coward Society.

Grimes married Christopher Plummer on August 16, 1956, with whom she had a daughter, actress Amanda Plummer. They were divorced in 1960. Her second husband was actor Jeremy Slate, whom she married in 1966 and divorced a year later. Her third husband was composer Richard Bell, whom she married in 1971; the couple remained wed until Bell's death in 2005.

In 1965, Grimes made headlines after she had been beaten and injured twice in four days by what were described as "white racists." According to a report, Miss Grimes said she believed the attacks were related to her association with several Black entertainers and recent appearances in public with Sammy Davis, Jr., who was said to be staging a nightclub act for her.

Grimes released three known one-off singles during the 1960s:

Home sweet heaven/You'd better love me, from High spirits, 1964

The big hurt/Nobody needs your love more than I do, 1966

I really loved Harold/Father O'Conner, 1969.

Her debut solo album, Julius Monk presents Tammy Grimes (1959), featured the music from her one-woman show at the NYC nightclub Downstairs at the Upstairs. The album was re-released on the AEI label in 1982. In the early 1960s, she recorded two more albums, one of which was Tammy Grimes, Columbia Records, 1962. They were re-released on one CD, as The unmistakable Tammy Grimes. She is featured on the following Original Cast Recordings: The littlest revue, The unsinkable Molly Brown, High spirits, 42nd Street, and Sunset, as well as a TV cast album of the televised version of George M. Cohan's 45 Minutes from Broadway.

Grimes also did the introductory narration for the American rebroadcast of the BBC's 1981 radio production of The lord of the rings. She recorded an album of children's stories, read out loud, called Hooray for Captain Jane in the early 1970s.

Enjoy Tammy Grimes’ incredible style (somehow reminiscent of Eartha Kitt’s style)!