Is Shy Baldwin Based On A Real Person? (2024)

FAQs

Is Shy Baldwin based on real person? ›

' It makes sense with Shy Baldwin — Shy Baldwin is a fictional character — but Harry Belafonte is very much real and has so many amazing tunes.”

Some of her competitors, like Lenny Bruce and Moms Mabley, are based on real comedians from the time, but Shy isn't. While he's technically an original character, that doesn't mean that his personality doesn't have some roots in the '50s.

The model for superstar crooner Shy Baldwin is almost certainly Johnny Mathis. But although the character Shy looks and sounds like Mathis, in his career, real-life Johnny never did record the hit song "Younger Than Springtime" from the famous Broadway musical and film South Pacific (1958).

Maisel' character Susie Myerson is actually based on real-life talent agent Sue Mengers. While a lot of people came to this conclusion on their own thanks to the shared initials, it was also confirmed by the showrunner.

Shy Baldwin wasn't a real person, and is a fictional character invented for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. However, his style and level of fame recalls to mind the success of Nat King Cole in the 1950s and 1960s.

Midge is heavily inspired on Joan Rivers, too.

Although much of her career and the show's setting is based around Amy's father, a lot of Midge's experiences are based on the life of Joan Rivers. Similarly to Midge, Rivers was born in New York to Jewish parents who disproved of her career in comedy.

What was in Lenny's bathroom in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 4? Well, what Midge found was something we already had a sense of. It was his hard drug stash.

Maisel's titular character, Midge, is fictional, but the New York City of the 1960s that she lives in was very, very real. The sights, the sounds, the Gaslight—they're all representative of the city during that time.

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Lenny Bruce, also known as Leonard Alfred Schneider, is a main and recurring character on the Amazon Prime show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. He is inspired by his real-life counterpart, the famous comedian Lenny Bruce.

Maisel" invented soulful crooner Shy Baldwin will haunt me until the end of time. Between the stage presence of Leroy McClain and the powerful vocals of Darius de Haas, it's hard to believe that Shy is merely an amalgamation of similar sultry-voiced '60s pop stars.

Did Joan Rivers have a relationship with Lenny Bruce? ›

Rivers (whose real life heavily influenced Maisel) had a friendship with Bruce similar to Midge and Lenny's in the series. However, near the end of her life, Joan would waffle on whether their relationship had also turned romantic or not. Still, she wasn't shy about expressing her attraction to him.

The biggest hint that Gordon Ford is based on Johnny Carson, though, is his real life and MMM rival: Jack Paar. Johnny was technically Jack Paar's successor on The Tonight Show, but quickly took over the limelight, and won over the audience.

Susie wears one piece of jewelry, a key, around her neck, which Zakowska says was Borstein's idea and is meant to be the key to the Gaslight. Zakowska explains that her designs for Susie stemmed from a desire to create strong contrast and tension between her and Midge.

Midge falls off a stage in the previous episode and is found wearing a sling at the beginning of this episode, but her arm is out of the sling and working fine during her stand-up act about halfway through the show.

Maisel' comedienne Sophie Lennon appears to be loosely based on Phyllis Diller, among other comediennes. Phyllis Diller was known for her outrageous and self-deprecating housewife persona. She did this for similar reasons that Sophie Lennon assumed the role of an overweight clownish housewife.

The King Cole Trio had a huge influence, inspiring other jazz musicians like Oscar Peterson and Ahmad Jamal to form similar trios. Epstein says if Cole had never crooned a note, he would still be an important figure in jazz.

Nathaniel A. Cole, known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American jazz pianist and vocalist. He became the first African American performer to host a variety TV. series in 1956.

Nat and the iconic singer, Frank Sinatra. Nat and Frank developed a great friendship and it has been said that Frank would play Nat's songs to help him relax.

It turns out that while she's pure fiction, she bears a striking resemblance to a number of female comics who emerged during the 1950s. Moreover, the show's depiction of the New York comedy scene is spot-on, making Midge all the more believable.

Asher Friedman is a fictional character, but he's unlikely to be based on a real playwright. Writers and actors weren't blacklisted from Broadway.

Why does Mrs Maisel hate Sophie? ›

You might recall that the bad blood between Sophie Lennon and Midge first arose in S1. After meeting with Sophie and learning that she is a wealthy, Yale-educated sophisticate and not a low-rent pleb from Queens, Midge exposes this fraud during a set at the Gaslight, kicking off a years-long feud.

But all beautiful fantasies must end at some point, and this fantasy concludes like a sledgehammer to the face when Midge is confronted with Lenny's bag of heroin paraphernalia.

While there may have been a plan to go for longer originally, things started to change due to the pandemic. Due to filming delays, it took a while to get The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Season 4. Amy and Dan looked at the plan for Midge and realized that it could be better to wrap up the story.

The air palpable with their wants, and with Midge making sure that Lenny will always see her as more than just a girl, an equal, they both succumb to their mutual attraction for one another and they end up having sex.

Maisel couldn't resist telling the story of her one night stand with a handsome man she met in Central Park (played by Gilmore Girls' Milo Ventimiglia), who turned out to be married. By recounting that she was "the other woman" who slept with a married man, Midge inadvertently brought Jackie Kennedy to tears.

It's a satisfying climax, but there are already signs that the two won't last. After they sleep together, Midge finds drugs in Lenny's bathroom, hinting that the show will eventually portray his 1966 death. (Season 4 takes place in the early '60s.) The season also ends with a major blow-up between the pair.

Rivers married Edgar Rosenberg on July 15, 1965. Their only child, Melissa Rivers, was born on January 20, 1968. Joan Rivers had one grandson, Cooper, born Edgar Cooper Endicott in 2000. Along with his mother and grandmother, Cooper was featured in the WE tv series Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?

Anne Debonis has been coming here since she was a kid. "You come here and you think of old times," she said. If it feels like the set of a TV show, well, it has been, playing the role of a Jewish butcher shop on "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel."

Midge Maisel Was Based On Joan Rivers

Though Midge saw greater success in the early stages of her career than Joan Rivers, both Rivers and Midge performed at the real-life club, the Gaslight Café, located in New York's Greenwich Village. Another significant tie between the two comediennes is Lenny Bruce.

English: Comedian Lenny Bruce's grave, Eden Memorial Park Cemetery in Mission Hills, California.

Does Barbra Streisand sing in Mrs Maisel? ›

"Happy Times Are Here Again" by Barbara Streisand works wonderfully in this scene. The song plays out in full for three entire minutes with no dialogue set to a montage of scenes.

Milo Ventimiglia's return to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was the hilariously unexpected cameo we didn't know we needed — back in the fourth season of the Prime Video series, Midge and Milo's Maisel character, Sylvio, hit it off during Midge's daily visits to Riverside Park.

Midge spends Season 3 as the opening act for the African-American singer Shy Baldwin.

Her daughter Melissa Rivers and grandson Cooper Endicott have inherited Joan's $150 million estate, including a Manhattan apartment worth $35 million. Longtime personal assistant and family friend, Jocelyn Pickett, will be entrusted to to take care of her four beloved pups.

The official cause of death was "acute morphine poisoning caused by an overdose". Bruce's remains were interred in Eden Memorial Park Cemetery in Mission Hills, California, but an unconventional memorial on August 21 was controversial enough to keep his name in the spotlight.

The finding was that Rivers was sedated with propofol before she died of low blood oxygen during a procedure to treat voice changes and acid reflux. Anoxic encephalopathy means that she did not have sufficient oxygen to her brain tissue for a prolonged period of time, which caused damage to her brain.

For example, crooner Shy Baldwin is "kind of an amalgamation of a lot of different figures who were that successful, but [real-life singer] Johnny Mathis comes to mind," Brosnahan told Refinery29. In the show, Shy is a closeted gay singer, and Mathis publicly came out as gay in recent years.

Maisel Season 5, the answer is no, Midge and Gordon Ford do not get together so far. (As of this writing, only Episodes 1–3 have aired.) However, there's an underlying tension between them whenever they interact, particularly after Midge snaps at Gordon in public after she embarrasses him live on-air.

Set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it stars Rachel Brosnahan as Miriam "Midge" Maisel, a New York housewife who discovers she has a knack for stand-up comedy and pursues a career in this field.

Susie appears to be known as the intimidating and slightly mysterious class bully at your school, and appears to be a dragon-type monster, as referenced by her Mane Ax weapon in the Dark World.

Does Susie have a tail? ›

5 She Has A Tail (And Keeps It Secret)

This seemingly minor fact was revealed in Chapter Two during the Ferris Wheel scene when Noelle notices it wagging. Her tail is never actually visible to the player, possibly because she tries to keep it hidden.

Like Susie is a girl (Heck, her name is feminine) but fan-artists draw her very masculine. or how kris is a boy, but people From Game theory call both Kris a She and a He.

Lenny Bruce struggled with addiction.

Maisel season 4, Midge discovers Lenny's drug stash. This critical plot point is accurate: Lenny was heavily addicted to drugs in the final years of his life. He reportedly used heroin, methamphetamine, and Dilaudid (an opioid) daily, according to Jewish Virtual Library.

Rachel Brosnahan wears a wig.

They permanently changed it mid-show, too. "We shortened the wig from the first couple of episode of the show to make it more perky. She has a perky quality as a character, so we wanted the wig to match," the show's head hair stylist Jerry DeCarlo told Refinery29.

Susie loses most of Midge's money through sports gambling and then decides to have Joel control Midge's finances. To pay Midge back for the money she lost, Susie and her sister burned down their late mother's home to get insurance money.

The relationship between Shy and Reggie is ultimately platonic, although the episode leaves some questions.

The This Is Us star is just one of several new additions to the cast for the third season, and although Broadway actor Darius de Haas dubs the singing voice of singer Shy Baldwin (played by Leroy McClain), Brown does his own singing.

Midge Maisel Was Based On Joan Rivers

Though Midge saw greater success in the early stages of her career than Joan Rivers, both Rivers and Midge performed at the real-life club, the Gaslight Café, located in New York's Greenwich Village. Another significant tie between the two comediennes is Lenny Bruce.

Shy tells her that he had been drinking at a bar and brought back a date who beat him up and left, coming out as gay in the process. He asks her to keep his sexuality a secret, knowing it would destroy his career if news got out.

Bruce struggled with addiction, and he died on August 3, 1966, following an accidental morphine overdose in his Los Angeles home. He's buried in Eden Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Why didn t Mrs Maisel marry Benjamin? ›

Midge's divorce was finalized during season 3. She was engaged to Benjamin but ended things when singer Shy Baldwin called to say that he wanted Midge to be his opening act on a USO tour. Oh, and when Joel visited Midge on tour, the two got drunk together and got remarried. Then they decided to get divorced—again.

As for Kirby and his character, fans might have been surprised to see Lenny fly off to California in the Season 5 premiere – particularly after the events of the Season 4 finale, when he and Midge finally consummated their relationship and Lenny also urged Midge to take her career to the next level.

One night while on tour, Midge discovers that Shy has been hiding his sexual identity as a gay man. Especially given that they live in the 1960s, Shy struggles to accept his true self and falls into bouts of depression.