Pearl Mae Bailey was an American actress and singer. After appearing in vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

, she made her Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 debut in St. Louis Woman

St. Louis Woman

St. Louis Woman is a musical by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer based upon the novel God Sends Sunday by African-American writer Arna Bontemps. The musical opened at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York on March 30,1946 and ran for 113 performances...

  in 1946. She won a Tony Award

Tony Award

The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...

 for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly!

Hello, Dolly! (musical)

Hello, Dolly! is a musical with lyrics and music by Jerry Herman and a book by Michael Stewart, based on Thornton Wilder's 1938 farce The Merchant of Yonkers, which Wilder revised and retitled The Matchmaker in 1955....

in 1968. In 1986, she won a Daytime Emmy award

Daytime Emmy Award

The Daytime Emmy Awards are awards presented by the New York-based National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles-based Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in recognition of excellence in American daytime television programming...

 for her performance as a fairy godmother in the ABC Afterschool Special

ABC Afterschool Special

The ABC Afterschool Special is an American television anthology series that aired on ABC from 1972 to 1996, usually in the late afternoon on week days. Most of the episodes were dramatic presentations of situations, often controversial, of interest to children and teenagers. Several episodes were...

, Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale.

Her rendition of "Takes Two to Tango" hit the top ten in 1952.
Bailey was born in Southampton County

Southampton County, Virginia

As of the census of 2010, there were 18,570 people, 6,279 households, and 4,502 families residing in the county. The population density was 29 people per square mile . There were 7,058 housing units at an average density of 12 per square mile...

 in southeastern Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

, to the Reverend Joseph and Ella Mae Bailey.