Engelbert Humperdinck
 Engelbert Humperdinck (born Arnold Dorsey) had been singing for
years without great success as Gerry Dorsey.
Then in 1967 he found
a new name - courtesy of his manager, Gordon Mills, who also
managed Tom Jones - and his Release Me single went to
Number One in the British charts.
He followed it with a long succession of easy listening
successes including The Last Waltz, Man Without Love,
Les Bicyclettes de Belsize and The Way It Used To Be.
As Top 40 radio became less hospitable to his kind of balladry
and a few Broadway influences found their way into his music,
Humperdinck concentrated on selling albums and on live
performances, developing lavish stage presentations that made him
a natural for Las Vegas and similar venues. He has sold over
130 million records and is reputed to have the largest fan club in
the world.
Dorsey was the ninth of ten children, and he left school at 15
to earn £1.40 a week in a shoe factory, handing most
of it over to his mother, Olive.
These days he owns five homes
around the world (until recently he owned Jayne Mansfield's
former LA house but traded it for a more manageable place), he has
owned 15 Rolls Royces, and estimates of his wealth range
from £72 million to £100 million.
Despite rumours of affairs and the number of women who have
claimed to have borne his children, he has remained married for 40
years to his wife, Patricia. In earlier decades there were
numerous stories of adulterous liaisons. Kathy Jetter, who was an
18-year-old Sunday school teacher and a virgin when she met
Engelbert, won a court order against him for maintenance of
her daughter, Jennifer, born in 1977.
Showgirl Diane Vincent received a one-off payment in respect of
her daughter, Angelique, but Engelbert has never acknowledged
paternity of either child.
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