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SCHAEFER Hal


Born Harold Herman Schaefer.

 

Date of birth : July 22, 1925, New York.

Date of death : December 8, 2012, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Profession singing teacher at the Fox.

Jack Cole's musical accompanist.

Portrait -,     

Addresses

* 1940 : 4742 Skillman Avenue, Queens, New York ()

* 1950 : 1327 North Vista Street, Los Angeles ()

* since 1993, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

 
Story

His father Louis was a housepainter who loved jazz. He taught him to play ragtime on the home piano.

Hal attended the High School of Music and Arts in Manhattan, before beginning playing professionnally at hotels in the Catskills.

Registration card, July 15, 1943

On August 29, 1955 he married Leah Cahan (February 27, 1920, Wisonsin-January 26, 2013) in Los Angeles 

(). They had a daughter Katherine (she died in June 2012). They divorced several years later.

On December 6, 1975, he married his second and last wife, Brenda Isabel Goodman (June 1st,1937, UK-April

7, 2000, Florida ). They met while she had singing lessons with him in 1973.

Composer and brilliant pianist, he started with Duke Ellington and included among his students in addition to Marilyn, Peggy Lee, Judy Garland and Barbara Streisand.

 
He met Marilyn in 1952; she took music lessons with him before the shooting of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes".

 
Then they collaborated in 1954 on Marilyn's insistance in "River of No Return" and
"There's No Business Like Show Business".

Letter about an agreement between them .

 
It often happened that they worked late at night at the studio, to Joe DiMaggio's big vexation.

 
The rumors of an affair between them began to be spread, Marilyn having already fallen in love with her singing teacher in 1948, Fred Karger. Those rumors increased when she rushed at his side, on July 27, 1954, at the Santa Monica Hospital where he had been admitted after having been found unconscious in his bungalow, on the land of the Fox.

He had swallowed a combination of Benzedrine, Nembutal and liquid corrector which could have been lethal.

Even if he didn't dwell on this incident, the biographers expressed the hypothesis that he could have wanted to committ suicide because DiMaggio had forced Marilyn to put an end to their affair, or because he had been greatly "advised" to stand apart. At that time, it was said that this banter had hastened Marilyn and DiMaggio's break-up, several months later.

During the event of the "raid on the wrong door", when Frank Sinatra, DiMaggio and some brawny sidekicks burst into an apartment, thinking to surprise an adulterous Marilyn with Hal Schaefer.

 

with Hal Schaefer ,,,                  


rehearsals

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,,                             


coffee break ,,               


armchair ,,,,;,,


After his Hollywood years, he settled in New York et became a recors-company executive, responsible pour signing and developing performers for the United Artists label.

He also wrote and arranged music for Broadway productions, including "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Forum" (1962).

He continued to teach singing throughout his life.




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