The Glamorous Life and Times of Corky Hale

Stephens is known for its long line of talented women graduates. Some come from the sciences; others from the arts. When it comes to creating a list of the College’s most talented musicians, Corky Hale is high on that list. Her accomplishments earned her the 2004 Alumnae Achievement Award from Stephens College.

A distinguished pianist, harpist and singer, Hale has accompanied many musical legends, including Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Tony Bennett and Liberace, just to name a few. And her musical roots go way back.

Born Merrilyn Hecht, Hale grew up in the small farm town of Freeport in northern Illinois and began playing the piano at the age of three. At age seven, she began classical piano studies at the Chicago Conservatory of Music, where she also became proficient at playing the harp.

During that seventh summer, Hale and her family were vacationing in Florida at a hotel that was featuring the Horace Heidt Orchestra. Hale was playing “Over The Rainbow” on the piano in the lobby when Heidt heard her and asked if she’d like to play with his band. Hale officially stepped into the world of professional music.

“That was my first job,” Hale says. “I got the show biz bug at seven.”

When she was 16, Hale's parents sent her to Stephens, where she spent her last year of high school. After arriving at the College, Hale quickly met members of the University of Missouri-Columbia band and began playing the piano and harp with them, which did not please her music teacher at Stephens. Her teacher did not approve of her playing jazz on the harp, and at the end of the year, in fact, the teacher failed her.

“My F in harp put me a half-point from graduating,” she says. “My parents ran down from Illinois, and finally, the teacher raised me to a D+ so that I was able to graduate.”

At Stephens, Hale became best friends with Ginny Ralles Parker ’51, who is still her best friend to this day. They lived in the same dormitory, Linden Hall, and were both aspiring musicians at the College. Parker, an accomplished opera singer from Lincoln, Neb., sang while Hale accompanied her on the piano.

“One of the funniest things I remember while we were at Stephens was that we used to go to dances, and everywhere we went, Corky would walk up to the bandstand and would tell them that she played the piano, and ‘my friend sings,’” Parker laughs. “And they would let us perform. Corky doesn’t remember that, but I do!”

After graduating from high school at Stephens, Hale enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, closer to home. After her freshman year, she announced to her parents that she wanted to go to Hollywood. Lengthy discussions ensued, and Hale and her parents reached a compromise – her parents would drive her to Los Angeles as long as she enrolled at UCLA.

Life as a student at UCLA, however, only lasted a few weeks. While Hale was living in a sorority house, one of the girls heard her playing the harp and told her that she'd like to introduce Hale to her father, who was the producer of the “Freddie Martin Television Show.” The producer immediately signed Hale to the show, which meant the end of her UCLA days. While performing on the weekly Freddie Martin show, Hale received a phone call that changed her life.

“The man told me that his name was George, that he played the violin and that his brother, Walter, was a pianist,” Hale recalls. “They told me that they saw me playing on the show and asked me to join a new television show that they were starting.”

The caller turned out to be the famous Liberace. Hale joined the “Liberace Show,” and it became a phenomenon. Hale ended up accompanying Liberace for three years, touring with him in 44 states and appearing in his movie, “Sincerely Yours.” She also bleached her hair platinum blonde, since Liberace convinced her that it would pick up the lights better.

“He was the nicest, sweetest man and my really good buddy,” Hale remembers.

Her parents eventually discovered their now platinum blonde daughter on television and as a result, her mother immediately flew to L.A. She found her daughter not in classes, but making good money by performing on TV shows. In fact, at the age of 19, Hale already had her own apartment and a white Buick convertible.

Hale’s success skyrocketed following the “Liberace Show.” She went on to perform on “The Red Skelton Show” as well as many other variety shows. She played on numerous film scores, accompanying Anne Baxter on the harp in the movie “The Ten Commandments.”

By the mid-1950s, she began performing at the Coconut Grove nightclub, joining again with the Freddie Martin Orchestra and eventually other bands.

Hale says the Coconut Grove nightclub job was unbelievably glamorous. She would look down every night and see Lana Turner, Robert Taylor, Van Johnson and other stars. In addition, every week the Coconut Grove would book a big act such as Martin and Lewis, Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee and even Frank Sinatra, whom Hale dated a few years later.

“If Frank was invited to some place very nice, he would often invite me because I had a little black dress and pearls,” she says. “I made a very nice appearance, and we could talk about music if he got bored.”

Jerry Grey then brought her to Las Vegas to sing and play the piano with his band. On opening day of rehearsal, Grey mentioned that they had booked a last-minute act, which turned out to be Billie Holiday. Holiday hired Hale to play with her at Los Angeles’ Jazz City before passing away two years later.

Concerned that their daughter needed “stability,” Hale’s parents moved to L.A. and opened a clothing store for her on the Sunset Strip, called “Corky Hale.” Hale’s family operated a chain of Hecht clothing stores throughout the Midwest and had hoped that their daughter would join the family business. Hale’s store was an enormous success with actresses and businesswomen as it specialized in small sizes, which were not readily available in other stores. It was there that she met an Englishman who had introduced Italian knitwear to the United States. Upon their marriage, she spent much of the next four years in Italy.

After her divorce, Hale moved to Rome for three years where she appeared on the weekly television show “Tempo di Jazz” and was an extra in numerous Italian movies. Later, in London she ran into another musical star, Tony Martin. Martin invited her to be his piano accompanist, so she moved to New York and appeared with him in L.A. and Florida. Hale was then hired by Tony Bennett to join his orchestra on harp. She was with that orchestra for three years, during which time he took her to the White House to play for President Lyndon B. Johnson.

 

Hale has played on numerous albums and many commercials, but thinks her most incredible job was being hired as a singer/dancer on the weekly NBC Kraft Music Hall. She says that to this day, she will never understand how she was hired or how she lasted for a year, as she could barely move one foot in front of the other.

In 1970, Hale married composer and producer Mike Stoller of the songwriting team Leiber & Stoller. They are known for writing many of Elvis’ hits, including “Hound Dog” and “Jail House Rock” and also two of Peggy Lee’s biggest hits, “I’m A Woman” and her theme song, “Is That All There Is?” In 1995, “Smokey Joe’s Café,” a show featuring 39 of Leiber & Stoller’s hits, opened on Broadway and broke the record five years later as the longest running musical revue in Broadway history.

Hale was also very busy accompanying artists such as Peter Allen, Judy Collins, James Brown and Barbra Streisand. Hale and Stoller moved to L.A. in 1989, where most of their work is.

In the past five years, Hale has served as music director for songwriters such as Oscar-winning composers Jay Livingston and Ray Evans; Alan and Marilyn Bergman; and Hal David of Bacharach & David. Her most recent CD, titled Corky, contains instrumentals on harp and piano, as well as vocals with an orchestra. In 2000, she was invited to Stephens to give a guest performance on harp, piano and vocals.

Later, Hale produced “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” a musical drama based on the life of lyricist Al Dubin, who, along with his partner composer Harry Warren, was a pioneer of the movie musicals of the 1930s. “Boulevard” played in the 1,000-seat Coconut Grove Theatre in Coconut Grove, Fla. Stephens College friends bought a block of seats for one performance and held a celebration cocktail party afterward. Hale is now working on placing that show in Chicago and London.

Her recent music productions included the star-studded “Salute To Hollywood Songwriters” for the 25th anniversary of the 1,000-seat La Mirada Theatre in 2002 and for the newly reopened Ferry Building in San Francisco in 2003. She’s also working on a TV documentary about producer/director Stanley Kramer, whose scores of films–including “High Noon,” “The Defiant Ones” and “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner “–received 85 Academy Award nominations.

This October, Hale is tentatively scheduled to perform at Stephens in its Celebrate the Music’s “Jazz on the Lawn.” The event is a fund raiser to allow Stephens’ jazz ensemble, the Velvetones, the funds to travel and play at Carnegie Hall in the spring.