Belle Barth

Annabelle Salzman, born in 1911, was the ninth child of a Manhattan merchant and, at a very early age, started performing at Borscht belt hotels and small nightclubs. Her first husband was Peter Barth, whose surname she retained when they divorced. In 1950, she moved to Miami Beach, where she married executive D. Thorne in 1954. Belle worked small clubs throughout the area, occasionally travelling to New York and Chicago to perform.

In 1953, Barth was arrested and fined $25 (US$273 in 2022 dollars[3]) for her act; several other cases against her were thrown out of court, including one lawsuit for 1.6 million dollars, brought by two schoolteachers who claimed that Barth's act had corrupted them morally and harmed their health. In spite of these charges, Barth did not modify her act. While living in Miami Beach, she opened Belle Barth's Pub in the Coronet Hotel on 21st Street and Collins Avenue.

During the 1960s, she performed often in New York and Las Vegas. In 1960 her talents were discovered by Stanley Borden who broke ground by signing her to his After Hours record label. Her 1960 single, If I Embarrass You Tell Your Friends, was the number one record of the year in Quebec. In 1961, she played both the Roundtable club in New York (where she recorded her second album) and a midnight show at Carnegie Hall on November 25, 1961.[4]

In Las Vegas, she played at the Thunderbird, then Caesar's Palace in Nero's Lounge. She returned to Miami Beach to play at venues including Harry's American Showroom at the Eden Roc, the Red Room at the Saxony, the Hotel Plaza in Joe's Lounge for Lovers, and Sans Souci lounge. She was usually accompanied by Margie Sherwin on piano.

Barth and Patsy Abbott owned their own nightclubs in Miami in the 1950s and 1960s.[5]

Barth was married five times; she and her last husband George B. Martin married twice, either side of a month-long divorce through March 1966. She had no children, but her family included many siblings, nieces and nephews.

Barth became ill in Las Vegas in May 1970, after her final performance in Miami Beach, at Joe's Lounge at the Hotel Plaza, during March 1970. She performed at the Flamingo once more in September 1970. She died at 10 p.m. on February 14, 1971, aged 59, at her Miami Beach home.

In 2000, Sophie, Totie & Belle,[6] a fictional meeting of Sophie Tucker, Totie Fields and Belle Barth written by Joanne Koch and Sarah Blacher Cohen, with some original music by Mark Elliott, lyrics by Mark Elliott and Joanne Koch, appeared for a limited engagement off Broadway at Theatre Four. The show had numerous productions before and after 2000. An April 28, 1996 review in The New York Times by Alvin Klein of the Forum Theatre –Queens Theatre in the Park New York and New Jersey production singled out the Belle Barth section of the show as outstanding:

“If Belle — 'Miami's answer to Lenny Bruce' — is the star of this occasion, blame her defiantly funny, audience winning material. And blame Vicky Tripodo [as Belle] who is having the smash hit of her career.”

In 2007, Barth was featured in the Off-Broadway production, The J.A.P. Show: Jewish American Princesses of Comedy, which included live standup routines by four female Jewish comics (juxtaposed with the stories of legendary performers from the 1950s and 1960s, Jean Carroll, Pearl Williams and Betty Walker, Totie Fields, and Barth herself).[7][8][9][10][11][12]

'Belle Barth: If I Embarrass You, Tell Your Friends' (STAGES 2008 Festival of New Musicals) will be presented by Theo Ubique at the No Exit Theatre Theatre Building Chicago Press Release

In 2018, Raunchy Little Musical – Belle Barth is Back! with Book by Joanne Koch, Music by Ilya Levinson, Lyrics by Owen Kalt, was performed at The PGA Arts Center, Palm Beach Gardens, FL.[13]

Barth released nine "adult party record albums" of original material. All were recorded live at her night club gigs:

• If I Embarrass You Tell Your Friends (recorded live, Miami Beach, 1960)
• My Next Story Is a Little Risque (recorded at The Roundtable, 1961)
• In Person (recorded at the Roundtable, 1961)
• For Adults Only (recorded at the El Morocco, Montreal)
• I Don't Mean to Be Vulgar, but It's Profitable (Side 1 recorded live at the Roundtable, 1961; Side 2 is the original Side 2 of her 1st album)[14]
• Belle Barth's Wild, Wild, Wild, Wild World! (1963)
• If I Embarrassed You, Forget It
• The Book of Knowledge (recorded live, Basin Street East, New York City, April 1966)
• Hell's Belle (compilation of other album material)
• The Customer Comes First
• Battle of the Mothers! (with Pearl Williams, compilation)
• Return Battle of the Mother!
• Party Snatches – the Best of... (compilation; Barth features)

• Bronski, Michael (August 15, 2003). "Funny girls talk dirty". Boston Phoenix. Retrieved 24 October 2023.
• Mock, Roberta (22 July 2020). "15. 'Shut Your Hole, Girlie. Mine's Making Money, Doll': Creative Practice-Research and the Problem of Professionalism". Creative Practice Research in the Age of Neoliberal Hopelessness: 221–241. doi:10.1515/9781474463584-020. Retrieved 24 October 2023. Williams' closest professional associates were Patsy Abbott (1921-2001), who started her career as a vocalist, and Belle Barth (1911-1971), who billed herself the 'Hildegard of the Underworld' and the 'doyenne of the dirty line'.
• Del Negro, Giovanna P. (2011-10-15). Greenspoon, Leonard (ed.). "The Bad Girls of Jewish Comedy: Gender, Class, Assimilation, and Whiteness in Postwar America". Jews and Humor - Studies in Jewish Civilization. Retrieved 24 October 2023. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the bawdy humor of Belle Barth, Pearl Williams, and Patsy Abbott, a trio of working-class Jewish stand-up comics, enjoyed enormous popularity in the United States.

• Negro, Giovanna P. Del (10 September 2010). "8. The Bad Girls of Jewish Comedy: Gender, Class, Assimilation, and Whiteness in Postwar America". In Diner, Hasia; Kohn, Shira; Kranson, Rachel (eds.). A Jewish Feminine Mystique?. Rutgers University Press. pp. 144–159. ISBN 978-0-8135-5030-5.

• Del Negro, Giovanna P., 'From the Nightclub to the Living Room: Gender, Ethnicity, and Upward Mobility in the 1950s Party Records of Three Jewish Women Comics', in Simon J. Bronner (ed.), Jews at Home: The Domestication of Identity[15]
• Aarons, Debra; Mierowsky, Marc (3 July 2014). "Obscenity, dirtiness and licence in Jewish comedy". Comedy Studies. 5 (2): 165–177. doi:10.1080/2040610X.2014.967017.
• Josh Kun 'If I Embarrass You, Tell Your Friends' The Musical Comedy of Belle Barth and Pearl Williams
• Mock, Roberta (27 September 2016). Jewish Women on Stage, Film, and Television. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-137-06713-5. ISBN 978-1-137-06713-5.
• Gaw, Melanie (2021). Joan Rivers: Comedy and Identity on the Road to Fashion Police. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Theses and Dissertations. 2783. Retrieved 24 October 2023.
• Overbeke, Grace (2012). "Subversively Sexy: The Jewish "Red Hot Mamas" Sophie Tucker, Belle Barth and Pearl Williams" (PDF). Studies in American Humor. Penn State University Press (25): 33–58. ISSN 0095-280X. JSTOR 42573642. Retrieved 24 October 2023.

• Belle Barth at Encyclopedia of Jewish Women