Eydie Gorme, the fairer half of the Steve and Eydie husband-wife nightclub act whose career spanned half a century, died yesterday in Las Vegas of an undisclosed "brief illness," reports People. She was 84. Calling his loss "unimaginable," husband Steve Lawrence said in a statement that "the world has lost one of the greatest pop vocalists of all time. Eydie has been my partner on stage and in life for more than 55 years. I fell in love with her the moment I saw her and even more the first time I heard her sing."
The couple, who wed in 1957, were a favorite of the Ed Sullivan Show and the Tonight Show, as well as a staple on stages from New York to Vegas. Gorme, the daughter of Sephardic Jews with a flair for languages, went on to some Spanish-language success on her own, notes the LA Times. A solo number, "Blame It on the Bossa Nova," hit the Billboard charts in 1963. She retired in 2009, at which time Lawrence remarked how strange it was to perform solo, calling it "the first time in 50 years I'll be able to finish a sentence without being interrupted." (More Eydie Gorme stories.)
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