About The Mabel Mercer Foundation
Our Mission
Mabel Mercer
Created in 1985 as a not-for-profit arts organization, The Mabel Mercer Foundation serves to both perpetuate the memory and spirit of its legendary namesake and to stimulate and promote public interest in the fragile and endangered world of cabaret. Currently in its second decade, the Foundation and its efforts have been perhaps best summarized and recognized by a recent commendation from The Oakland Tribune: “Cabaret may not be thriving, but it is alive and well, thanks mainly to The Mabel Mercer Foundation and its support of wonderfully diverse talents.”
About Mabel Mercer
Mabel Mercer, conte crayon by Lisa Rhana, 1964.
The legendary cabaret singer Mabel Mercer was born in 1900 in Staffordshire, England. After leaving a Manchester convent school at the age of fourteen, Miss Mercer joined her aunt in a vaudeville and music hall tour of Britain and the Continent. Her career quickly flowered, and by the 1930s she was the toast of Paris, introducing her inimitable style of singing to adoring audiences and beguiling such steadfast admirers as Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, and the Prince of Wales. The outbreak of World War II brought her to America where she began a series of engagements at New York’s finest supper clubs. Among the rooms she made her own were Le Ruban Bleu (a six-month stay), Tony’s (seven years), the RSVP (two years), and five years in her own Byline Club. Miss Mercer solidified her career with engagements at the Carlyle and St. Regis Hotels, and she enjoyed brilliant concert triumphs and record-breaking appearances across the United States.
About Donald Smith
Donald Smith
Donald Smith has been actively involved with the world of cabaret for over forty years. Indeed, The OaklandTribune recently and gratefully described him as “the man who has done more than anyone else to keep cabaret alive.”
For more than two decades, he worked closely with his great friend Mabel Mercer — arguably the supreme cabaret artist of the twentieth century — and arranged for her performance seasons in (among other locations) New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. He also organized her dramatic, triumphal return to her native England after a forty-one year absence. Additionally, Mr. Smith has managed, promoted, and nurtured the careers of the acclaimed Andrea Marcovicci, Michael Feinstein, and Steve Ross. In one capacity or another, he has also represented (among many others) Julie Wilson, Margaret Whiting, KT Sullivan, Craig Rubano, Jeff Harnar, and Sylvia Syms.
