Cynthia Sue (Strother) Ellison Courtesy of Rex Strother
Cynthia Strother, the vocalist and songwriter that teamed with her more youthful sibling Kay as The Bell Sisters, a preferred adolescent act that located over night success in the 1950s with their really initial track, “Bermuda,” has actually passed away. She was 88.
Strother passed away Friday of cardiac arrest at a hospice center in Las Vegas, her nephew Rex Strother informed The Hollywood Reporter.
The Bell Sisters, that taped for RCA from 1951-55, executed frequently on radio reveals held by the similarity Bing Crosby and Bob Hope and on such tv programs as The Johnny Carson Show, The Colgate Comedy Hour and The Mickey Mouse Club.
The set likewise showed up in the 1953 big-screen musicals Cruisin’ Down the River, starring Dick Haymes, and Those Redheads From Seattle, starring Rhonda Fleming.
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The oldest of 7 children — their daddy, Gene, was an electrical expert for an air travel firm — Cynthia Sue Strother was born upon Oct. 4, 1935, in Harlan County, Kentucky, and elevated with her family members in Seal Beach, California.
She created “Bermuda” in 1951 at the piano when she was 16 and still going to Huntington High School and Kay was 11.
“I like Spanish music best and was beating out Spanish tempo on the piano,” she informed Newsweek in 1952. “I just got the idea and went through with it, until it was finished. Then we all got together to write the words. We got Indian ideas and a Spanish bullfighter idea. Then somebody said, ‘Bermuda,’ and we liked that.”
Adopting their mom Edith’s initial name of Bell for their act, the women executed in October 1951 on a regional KNXT-TV program called “Peter Potter’s Search for a Song.” One of the courts of the night’s amateur structures was a songs author, that right away identified the song’s possibility.
The women were hurried right into a Hollywood workshop to demo the track for band leader Henri Rene, the West Coast A&R guy for RCA-Victor, and “Bermuda” was promptly launched in March 1952, at some point climbing to No. 7 on the Billboard songs graph. It would certainly offer greater than 1 million duplicates.
“I tried not to influence their natural style in any way,” Rene informed Downbeat publication. “I told them to sing just the way they sing for fun around the house. If they go over as big as we think they will, it will be due to the freshness and simplicity of their manner.”
Watch the sis carry out “Bermuda” on The Dinah Shore Show here.
The sis likewise had hits with “Wheel of Fortune,” that made it to No. 10, and “Hambone,” which was taped with actor-singer Phil Harris and charted as high as No. 19.
They would certainly open up for Nat King Cole in Los Angeles, carry out throughout the nation and also trip Korea with various other Hollywood entertainers and the USO — all when institution wasn’t in session, obviously.
In Paramount’s Those Redheads From Seattle, the women sang “Take Back Your Gold,” and Cynthia represented the love passion of Guy Mitchell’s personality.
“I was playing a nurse, and he was supposed to come in where I was rolling bandages and we had some dialogue and then we were supposed to kiss. Well, even though I was 17, I don’t think I’d ever kissed a boy before, and what’s more, there was talk his wife was going to be on the set,” she remembered in an article on The Bell Sisters’ website.
“I mean, it was bad enough we never had any acting lessons — Kay and I were just winging it, basically. I was so flustered because I had to kiss Guy and I had no experience, and his wife was going to be watching. Well, it must have really showed in the footage, because after all the worry and embarrassment of getting through it, they didn’t even use the scene in the movie.”
The sis were superb acapella vocalists and invited at armed forces medical facilities and bases, where they regularly needed to carry out without a band.
“Bermuda” remained to produce nobilities for Cynthia over the years, with her track listened to in Allison Anders’ Grace of My Heart (1996).
After she left movie industry, she instructed swimming to disabled kids and grownups.
In enhancement to Kay, survivors include her various other sis, Sharon, Judy, Paula and Alice; her children, Seth, Kristoffer and Keven; and many grandchildren. Her spouse, Seth, whom she wed in 1957, passed away in 2006; her bro, Rex, passed away in 2019; and her little girl, Anastasia, passed away in 2022.
This tale was initially released by The Hollywood Reporter.
