Photo Credit: Photographer-Herman Leonard, New York, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
In 1918, William H. Benzell and Esther Minnie Cohen welcomed their daughter Miriam Ruth “Mimi” Benzell into their Bridgeport, Connecticut, home. Her father worked in the furniture industry. The family moved to Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, where both Jewish and Russian immigrants lived by the late 20th century; both communities would thrive. When Benzell’s family moved there, the area was a popular vacation destination.
She inherited a talent for music from her paternal grandfather, who had been a popular singer in Russia before he came to the United States. She first focused on playing piano, but switched to vocals while attending the Mannes School of Music, a private music conservatory founded in 1916, after two years at Hunter College.
Benzell’s first major operatic roles happened in Mexico City, where in 1944 she played roles in two different productions of Mozart operas: Don Giovanni and then The Magic Flute. That second role also became her first major role at the Metropolitan Opera, also simply called “the Met.” She sang at the Met in a Gala event in 1944 and had appeared in 96 other performances by early 1949.
In July 1949, she married Walter Gould. The two would have two children, Jonathan and Jennifer. In the post WWII era, women found it difficult to juggle family and career, no matter how famous they were. While Benzell worked when she could, she sadly never became a major celebrity post wedding and motherhood.
Benzell went on to appear in television shows from 1948 to 1952. Most of these appearances were on variety shows, including eleven times on Toast of the Town, which later became the Ed Sullivan Show. On TV and in nightclubs, she used her soprano voice to perform opera, operetta, and even the blues, trying to reach people who might not recognize her from the Met. She recorded two operatic albums with Alfred Drake, an American actor and singer – Roberta from 1944 and The Vagabond King in 1951. She also appears on or recorded eleven other albums and singles as well as singing on a few radio shows. The stage called to Benzell, so she did smaller productions such as Paris or Rosalie throughout her life, but she appeared in only one Broadway show: 1961’s Milk and Honey.
She channeled much of her non-domestic time into charitable work, most notably with the women’s division of B’nai B’rith, a Jewish service organization. Benzell never stopped performing when she could or being active in local arts. In 1969, she accepted the position of director of the Nassau County Office of Performing and Fine Arts. Unfortunately, she held that job only until the following year, when she resigned but stayed as active as she could on the board. She was fighting cancer and died from it on December 23, 1970, while just in her 50s.