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Bailey downimg1/29/2024 She slaps her city tabloids down on the counter and walks to the rear to order a sandwich, pick out yogurt and, of course, schmooze. She always gets to the Port Authority bus terminal at least two hours before curtain and always stops at Port Deli, on the corner of Eighth and 43rd. "I came home with Larry last night," she told Martinez. Martinez will often ask about her ride back home the night before and who drove her. "I've been going 55 years."īailey sat down and made small talk with Martinez, as they usually do, about their families and their workdays. And everyone knows not to sit in the front passenger seat. He pulled up to the stop and took her bags.īailey calls herself the maitre d' of the bus, receiving more hugs and kisses from fellow riders than she can count. On one of her double-shift days this month, Bailey was out at the bus stop on Route 36 in Middletown, N.J., waiting for her morning driver, Academy bus driver Jose Martinez. Her routine hasn't changed much since Phantom's opening night at the Majestic, on Jan. Two weeks later, Bailey started working at the Majestic Theater for the musical 42nd Street. She ended up staying 22 years, until it closed in 1986.ĭuring a snowstorm one night on the bus heading back to Union Beach, Bailey, already a widow, lamented the loss to a friend and neighbor, Rose Heslin, who had worked for the Shubert Organization, the titan theater company. Raising her five children prompted her exit from show business, so during motherhood she worked for the City of New York as a stenographer.īut she grew tired of sitting behind a desk and took what she figured would be a part-time job at a diner on Broadway. In 1960 she moved to her tidy two-story home in Union Beach. Vintage image of Sylvia Bailey, date unknown, provided by the longtime 'Phantom of the Opera' usher herself. (Photo: Gannett/Asbury Park (N.J.) Press) "I just liked school."Ī favorite photo that was destroyed by Sandy shows her at the Roxy in a tight dress with ruffles flowing to the floor. "I'd come home from work, take off my makeup, take off my fancy clothes and put on my school clothes and get the Third Avenue El (elevated train) and go right to school," she said, noting that she went to school for 12 years with perfect attendance. ![]() She would do her homework backstage, she said, and normally wouldn't get home until 4 a.m. She sang contralto and wore her auburn hair short with curls, just like she does today. "I looked like I was about 19 or 20," Bailey said. The family headed north to New York City and settled in the Bronx.īailey had to help support the family, so she found work singing on morning radio shows.Īs a teenager she sang and danced at famous city nightclubs like The International Casino in Greenwich Village and the Roxy Theater near Times Square, where Bailey said she made $49 a week. In 1937, her father, a coal miner, fell ill. "The show business was in me right from the start," Bailey said. She knows the show "in and out," and even after a quarter-century she finds pleasure in watching the gothic mystery unfold on the stage.īailey was born in 1925 and raised in Bessemer, Pa., a small coal-mining town.īy the age of 3, she was taking 50-cent tap lessons at a Catholic school in nearby Masontown, she said. I'm staying on as long as he does."įew people have seen Phantom, which surpassed 10,000 performances in February, more than Bailey. "We've been standing room the last two months. ![]() "The Phantom ain't going nowhere, and neither am I," she said in a squeaky voice. She missed about three weeks last year after superstorm Sandy flooded her home and nearly destroyed her living room. In her 27 years at the theater, Bailey has taken few vacations and rarely called out sick. ![]() It is that demanding routine and her lifelong bent for Broadway that she says keeps her alive. But at 88, she works just as hard as she did then, putting in six shows a week, including two double-performances that have her out of the house at 9 a.m. For half that time her commute has ended at the Majestic Theatre, where she is an usher for Broadway's longest-running play, The Phantom of the Opera.īailey is in the second act of her show business career - a slower version of the singing, dancing nighthawk on New York City's club circuit in the 1940s. She was born in Bessemer, PA, lived in the Bronx and Brooklyn before settling in Union Beach, NJ.įor more than 53 years she has been taking the bus from Union Beach to Manhattan. Sylvia Bailey-Downing passed away Saturday at Riverview Medical Center.
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