Elaine Delmar

Born to the late Jamaica-born jazz pianist Leslie "Jiver" Hutchinson, Elaine Delmar ranks among England's most cherished entertainers. She first performed as a pianist at thirteen on the BBC radio program The Children's Hour. Since then she has maintained parallel paths as a solo act on England's club circuit and as a performer in stage musicals. In 1962 she joined the Liverpool revival of Finian's Rainbow; London credits followed in No Strings, Cowardly Custard, Bubbling Brown Sugar, and The Wiz. Her Broadway bow came in 1985 with Goes to Hollywood, whose score drew on Jerome Kern. In 1991 she toured with actor and singer Paul Jones in Let's Do It, marking Cole Porter's centenary, then rejoined him two years later for the concert series Hooray for Hollywood, which spotlighted numbers from Porgy & Bess, Annie Get Your Gun, and Top Hat. On screen she portrayed a princess in Ken Russell's 1974 film Mahler, drawn from the life of Austrian conductor and composer Gustav Mahler. While still a high-school student she joined her father's band and played United States Air Force bases across England in the late 1950s; she was traveling with the ensemble when Hutchinson perished in a car crash in 1959.