Is That All There Is? The Strange Life of Peggy Lee by James Gavin (Atria Books, $32)
Peggy Lee was one of the iconic popular singers of the 20th century. She is also recognized as probably the greatest white female jazz singer of her time. Her two best-remembered hits, "Fever" and "Is That All There Is?," are considered definitive. Other chanteuses tried to replicate her success with those songs, but to little avail. She was the model for the diva Muppet character Miss Piggy, and has been the inspiration for three generations of drag queens. And it appears, based on gay author James Gavin's new biography, that her life was an unqualified mess, almost from start to finish.
She was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, on May 16, 1920, the seventh of eight children, the daughter of a railroad station agent who was an alcoholic. The great trauma of her life, from which she never fully recovered, was the death of her mother. Norma was four. A few years later, her father remarried to Min Schaumber, the personification of Cinderella's wicked stepmother, at least in Norma's eyes. For the rest of her life, Norma regaled listeners, interviewers, and concert audiences with Min's episodes of cruelty (pouring hot water on her). Based on Gavin's interviews, most of this was probably an invention of Norma's vivid imagination. Still, Norma's confusing fantasy and reality began early, and ultimately would destroy any chance for her happiness.
She discovered her talents by singing on radio in Fargo, ND, where radio personality Ken Kennedy renamed her Peggy Lee. She fled North Dakota at 17, headed for Los Angeles. Her sultry looks and sound aroused attention, and eventually she was noticed by swing bandleader Benny Goodman in Chicago. Ambitious, she became his replacement vocalist for Helen Forrest in 1941 and recorded her first smash hit, "Why Don't You Do Right?" in 1943, which made her famous. That year she married the guitarist Dave Barbour, defying Goodman's edict against band members fraternizing with each other. Goodman fired Barbour, and Lee quit. Daughter Nicki was born in 1943, and the marriage ended in 1951. Three more short unsuccessful marriages would follow through the early 1960s. She had many sexual relationships with men (including Frank Sinatra), usually either married or gay, but ultimately wound up alone and heartbroken.
Lee was a successful songwriter. Her most famous songs were from the Disney animated classic Lady and the Tramp (1955), for which she supplied the singing and speaking voices. She had a very brief acting career, winning critical acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress as the alcoholic blues singer in the 1955 film Pete Kelly's Blues. She continued recording record albums and touring for the next 40 years, eventually winning a Grammy for 1969's "Is That All There Is?," her last big hit, which resurrected her declining career. She continued to perform live, mostly at cabarets, until close to the end of her life, generally to critical plaudits, pushing herself to the point of exhaustion, appearing in a wheelchair with a portable oxygen tent nearby (her lungs were damaged in her 30s) mostly because she needed the money to sustain her extravagant lifestyle.
Although her health was poor (she had diabetes and heart problems), she was a neurotic hypochondriac, inventing illnesses to match her "symptoms." She had a vicious temper, though her outbursts were generally short-lived. She was an on-and-off alcoholic and drug addict. She was a demanding perfectionist, towards herself and her staff, whom she drove mercilessly, almost all of whom left her. When she wasn't singing or recording, most of her life was spent in bed, where she would receive friends, family, and admirers. Her last years were spent on frivolous lawsuits, though she sued Disney successfully after a protracted battle to reclaim the royalties she felt were owed her from Lady and the Tramp videos and DVDs. She tried to capitalize on her life story in Peg: The Musical, which closed after eight performances in 1983. Lee died at 81 in 2002, after suffering a stroke two years earlier that left her semi-comatose.
Gavin's meticulous research and interviewing skills are apparent, as in his previous biographies of Lena Horne and Chet Baker. Lee's life was indeed strange to the point of bizarre, and in her final years she claimed to be a reincarnated angel sent to spread love. The problem is that Gavin seems ambivalent about his subject, lauding her successes, then knocking them down with stories about her tantrums and eccentricities. Despite her faults and the difficulties of working with her, her talent always shone through, and her influence lives on in performers as diverse as Madonna and k.d. lang. At 600 pages, no one will be asking is that all there is about Gavin's tortured portrait. A marker near Lee's gravesite in LA's Westwood Cemetery reads, "Music is my life's breath." Gavin's biography proves how she lived out this creed till the day she died.