Genevieve "Jenée" Louie Li obit

Alice Porcello Obituary

 Genevieve "Jenée" Louie Li Has Died

She was not on the list.

Remembering Genevieve "Jenée" Louie Li (May 19, 1920 - November 3, 2019) The third daughter of a Polish seamstress and a Chinese waiter. The acrobat who danced to "Beautiful Love" as a child in kiddie revues in Minneapolis. The quiet sister nicknamed "Horse" because she loved Black Beauty. The first sister to leave the Kim Loo Sisters jazz vocal quartet to marry a Chinese graduate student at the University of Chicago. The sister who lived in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong during the Chinese Civil War (!945-1950). Mother of four daughters. Returned to the United States, she made "chic chapeaux" for her mother's dressmaking shop Kim Loo Creations in New York's Hell's Kitchen. She was the buyer of robes and loungewear for Saks Fifth Avenue, Joseph Magnin, and Macy's-Bamberger's, where she became fashion coordinator creating fashion shows— extravaganzas utilizing her skills from show business that incorporated music, singing, dancing, stagecraft, GLAMOUR! She presented her fashion shows in retail stores, hotel ballrooms—even New York's Polo Grounds. She'd never gotten the sawdust out of her blood. She was back in showbiz again.

The Kim Loo Sisters were an American jazz vocal quartet popular during the swing era. The close harmony group consisted of Alice (August 22, 1916 – April 16, 2011), Margaret “Maggie” (November 4, 1917 – July 14, 2016) Genevieve “Jenée” (May 19, 1920 – November 3, 2019) and Patricia “Bubbles” (born October 3, 1922).

Just Us Girls (Four Seasons Press, 2015) by Leslie Li is the official companion book to The Kim Loo Sisters documentary. It comprises interviews of all four sisters, both individually and collectively and includes over 50 color and black and white photographs. The book tells the story of the four sisters’ lives and careers from early childhood in Minnesota during the Roaring Twenties, to appearing in vaudeville theaters across the country during the Great Depression, to performing on the Broadway stage, the Hollywood silver screen and overseas during the Second World War.

The sisters began their careers as child entertainers in kiddie revues in and around their hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota during the Jazz Age (1920–1929). They traveled with the vaudeville circuits during the Great Depression (1929–1939). During the Second World War (1939–1945), they appeared on the Broadway stage and the Hollywood screen with actors including Frank Sinatra, Ann Miller, The Three Stooges, Jackie Gleason, and Louis Jordan. Dubbed “the Chinese Andrews Sisters,” the Kim Loo Sisters were arguably the first Asian American act to star in Broadway musical revues.