Emmett "Babe" Wallace's life in the world of the arts began in the 1930s and continues, albeit in a somewhat reduced fashion, into the 1980s. This includes a performing career on three continents in cabarets, musical reviews, films and theatre. Wallace is also a composer and writer and has produced a voluminous and still growing body of musical compositions, poetry, essays and journals.
In the central portion of his career, both in a chronological sense and in terms of professional prominence, Wallace was among the many Afro-American artists forced to seek opportunities abroad. For seventeen years, from 1947 until 1964, he lived the alternating exhilaration and near despair that is the common experience of the artist in exile. These good and bad times, both abroad and when faced with the rebuilding of an American career after the long hiatus, are among the themes worked and re-worked in his creative materials. Other themes cover both the intensely personal and the abstractly universal: he touches on daily joys and pains, family concerns, racial justice, religion, politics and all points between. In his constant repetition of these themes, Wallace exemplifies one man's efforts to integrate his life and his art.
Babe Wallace was born to George Bason and Inez Wallace in Brooklyn on June 24, 1909. His education was cut short in the 5th semester at the "Manual Training High School" in Brooklyn. Such odd jobs as busboy and messenger carried Wallace through his immediate post-school years, years which also included Sunday night excursions to the Savoy Ballroom with friends who encouraged him to step up and sing out. From such beginnings, and a subsequent job as bouncer at the Savoy, a show business career was launched.
During the 1930s and early 1940s, Babe Wallace worked at clubs and hotels in Canada, Boston, New York City and in the Catskill Mountains and developed the style on which his mature reputation was built. Under ideal conditions that style consisted of singing an array of his own compositions appropriate to the particular setting in which he found himself. Patter songs, romantic ballads, topical songs and something fast and up-beat were standard; Yiddish songs, traditional spirituals and currently popular songs were among the additional options. Following a World War II stint in the U.S. Army, it was this general format with some French material added, that carried Wallace through a three year engagement with the Folies Bergere in Paris (1952-1955). This lengthy contract was a wholly unprecedented experience for an American performer.
With the addition of some Hebrew songs, and of course, the constant re-working and expansion of the topical material and the introduction of new songs in general, Wallace worked this format in Israeli clubs, hotels and Army installations from 1956-1962.
Another brief period on the European continent followed the Israeli, years and in 1964 Wallace returned to the United States with a season's contract to perform in the Catskills.
Concurrent with the above lengthy career as a solo performer, Wallace appeared in both film and stage plays, again on three continents. Among his films and character roles were: "Stormy Weather", a 1943 Hollywood film starring Lena Horne; the long-running London production of "Anna Lucasta" in 1947-1948; an Israeli film in which he sang one of his own compositions in the 1950s; a Paris production of Edward Albee's "The Death of Bessie Smith" in the early 1960s; in such off-Broadway productions as Eugene Ionesco's "Bald Soprano", and Al Kirk's "Daniel, The Fighting Black Congressman" in the late 1960s. During this latter period he also appeared on television in the series "Our Street".
Despite the club and theatrical work referred to above, Wallace's re-entry into American life did not lead to an invigorated career. From 1966 to 1970, Wallace was forced by circumstances to work as a messenger, elevator operator and mail room clerk for Twentieth Century Fox.
The 1970s found Wallace re-committed to a life in the arts, with writing assuming an increasingly central role, acting largely concentrated in community theatre, and cabaret and hotel work minimal.
Wallace's immediate family consists of two children, Carolyn and Michael, and five grandchildren, Larry Jr., Toye, Robin, Lisa and Mayo.