When I was young (the year was 1989) I got to see Ella Fitzgerald at the Hollywood Bowl – I’d never heard her before, and I was enchanted. I think she must have been in her eighties and at one point she stepped too far and stumbled off the stage into the box seats where she was caught by the crowd. Unruffled, she got back on stage and continued to perform. I can’t remember if she thanked her doctor at that point for keeping her in good health, or earlier in the evening.
Miss Fitzgerald in 1956 returning from a tour of Europe:
