Belle Barth - Posthumous

Posthumous

Her influence can be seen the careers of Madeline Kahn, Bette Middler, Gilda Radner and Joan Rivers. Barth's distinctive style - her grandmotherly appearance and foul mouth - was referenced by Bette Midler, who quoted her line "Shut your hole, mine's makin money!"

In 2000, “Sophie, Totie & Belle: 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, opening March 15- April 10, 2000 featuring Joann Cunningham as Belle. The show had numerous productions before and after 2000, from 1990-2003, in Philadelphia, New Hope, PA, North Miami Beach, Boca Raton, Sarasota and New Port Ritchie, Florida featuring Joann Bradley as Belle. The April 28, 1996 New York Times review 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 who is having the smash hit of her career.”

Joanne Koch and Sarah Blacher Cohen, seeing the great potential in the Belle character, started to discuss a possible new show focusing only on Belle, but Sarah Cohen’s fatal illness left Joanne to develop the new show: “Belle Barth: If I Embarrass You, Tell Your Friends.” This time Koch collaborated with composer Ilya Levinson and lyricist Owen Kalt (her collaborators on a previous musical “American Klezmer”) to create a completely original score for a two-person musical devoted to Belle. “Embarrass” workshopped in 2007 with Honey West as Belle directed by Alexandra Billings at the Acorn Theatre in Michigan, then at the Chicago Writers’ Bloc at the Theatre Building Chicago, (funded by the Dramatists Guild Fund) then at the Stages 2008 Festival of New Musicals at Theatre Building Chicago, where it was picked up by Theo Ubique Theatre for a premiere November 9 –December 21, 2008 production at the No Exit in Chicago featuring Bethany Thomas as Belle directed by Fred Anzevino.

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.