Her father Joseph was a minister and her mother was named Ella Mae. Her real name was Pearly Mae but her parents anticipated she would be a boy and when a girl was born she was nicknamed "Dickie". She spent her early life in Wash. DC where she received her early education. Bailey frequently appeared in the Old Howard theater in downtown Wash. As a young woman she toured the Pennsylvania mining towns as a dancer and later as a singer in Vaudeville. She starred in the film St. Louis Blues opposite Nat King Cole, which was the biography of W.C. Handy. Her greatest theater role was in the broadway musical "Hello Dolly".



Carmen Jones (1954): $1,666.66 per week

Born at 7:00am-EST Received the Women's International Center (WIC) Living Legacy Award in 1989. Appointed as a special ambassador to the United Nations in 1975 by President Gerald Ford. Won a Special Tony Award in 1968 for her performance as a replacement in the lead in "Hello, Dolly!". RCA released a new version of the Broadway Cast Recording with Bailey, the first time this was done during a Broadway show's original run. (Carol Channing had originated the role in 1964.). Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 47-50. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999. She was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 7080 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California. Her brother was Bill Bailey (1912-1978). He is generally credited with first performing the "moonwalk" dance step in _Cabin in the Sky (1943)_ starring Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, Ethel Waters and Lena Horne.