Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live At Daybreak

Remembering Peggy Lee

Aired January 22, 2002 - 06:57   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We must end this hour on a sad note, Peggy Lee could sing "Fever" like nobody else. It was her signature song. Well, Lee died last night at her home in Bel Air, California. She was 81 years old.

CNN's Paul Vercammen looks at the career of Peggy Lee.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(PEGGY LEE SINGING "FEVER")

PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With a passion to perform, with stirring renditions of songs like "Fever," Peggy Lee overcame a lifetime of heartache. She recorded more than 600 songs, wrote 200 more.

PEGGY LEE: Who could have dreamed that I'd have my own lovely home and have the success I've had?

VERCAMMEN: Perhaps Lee, who was born Norma Deloris Egstrom of Jamestown, North Dakota, couldn't dream of her success in adulthood because of all the pain in childhood. Lee's mother died when the singer was four. In her autobiography, Lee recalled being beaten by her stepmother. But Lee persevered through music.

LEE: Finding that strength within yourself makes you easily able to survive many things that one wouldn't think you could.

VERCAMMEN: In 1941, a big break when bandleader Benny Goodman hired her.

(LEE SINGING)

VERCAMMEN: Lee eventually married Goodman guitarist Dave Barbour.

LEE: Proof everybody can fall in love. And if they fall out of love, well, I hope they don't hurt themselves.

VERCAMMEN: Barbour's alcoholism prompted Lee to divorce him. But after two more marriages and divorces and after the guitarist was sober for 13 years, Lee was set to try again.

LEE: I was in agreement I was going to marry him. and then four days later, he died -- just suddenly died. And that was a shocking thing and that wasn't a Merry Christmas that one.

VERCAMMEN: But Lee rebounded again, battling all the way against diabetes, a heart condition and a 1987 fall in Las Vegas that limited her ability to walk. And she never quit in her court dispute with Disney over the home movie rights to the 1955 animated classic "Lady and the Tramp." Lee wrote six of the movie's songs and was the voice for four characters after Walt Disney himself heard some demos.

LEE: And when Walt heard them he said I wish you'd do these voices. Would you do that? And I said I would love to. I just -- I enjoyed it so much.

VERCAMMEN: Three and a half decades later, Lee finally won $2.3 million for her role in "Lady and the Tramp" in a California Supreme Court decision.

In another movie experience, Lee won an Academy Award nomination for her performance as an alcoholic singer in the 1955 movie "Pete Kelly's Blues." But music, not movies, made Peggy Lee's illustrious career marked by triumph over tragedy.

(LEE SINGING)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com