Molly Bee, the country singer who shot to fame at age 13 with the 1952 novelty hit “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” died Saturday of complications following a stroke. She was 69.
Bee was just 10 when she sang on country star Rex Allen’s radio show. Three years later, the blond girl with the sweet-honey voice had a hit song and a regular role on Los Angeles television and later “Hometown Jamboree,” a popular Los Angeles country-Western TV show. She made her movie debut in 1954 in “Corral Cuties,” opposite country star Tennessee Ernie Ford, with whom she had recorded “Don’t Go Courtin’ in a Hot Rod Ford” the year before.
“She just had this kind of down-home quality about her. There was nothing phony about her; it was all real, and everyone loved her,” actress Beverly Washburn said. The two had appeared as sisters in the 1958 teen musical comedy “Summer Love.” Bee’s career began to fade by the late 1960s, however, and in later years she was candid in saying a period of drug abuse was one of the reasons.
Molly Gene Beachboard was born Aug. 18, 1939, in Oklahoma City and raised in Tennessee and Arizona before moving to Los Angeles with her family at age 11.
She is survived by daughters Lia Genn and Bobbi Carey, son Michael Allen, brother Robert Beachboard and four grandchildren. The Associated Press
