Milly Del Rubio 1921-2011

[Zoneboy]

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Bringing a final close to one of the campiest acts in recent show business history, the last of the Del Rubio Triplets has died.

A funeral Mass will be celebrated Friday for Milly Del Rubio, who died July 21. She was 89.

Eadie Del Rubio died in December 1996 and Elena Del Rubio in March 2001.

Milly will be buried alongside her sisters at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.

The Del Rubio Triplets - who were inseparable and shared a three-bedroom mobile home at the Palos Verdes Shores park overlooking the ocean in San Pedro - found fame late in life with a young following in the 1980s.

"Everyone fell in love with them," said Grammy-award winning songwriter Allee Willis, credited with discovering "the girls" in 1985. "Even if you started out thinking, `This is bizarre,' you ended up being completely captivated by them. They were such characters."

With an offbeat repertoire of more than 1,000 songs - from Nat King Cole to the Rolling Stones to Devo - the triplets delighted audiences as they performed wearing miniskirts, low-cut tops and go-go boots, strumming well-worn acoustic guitars.

"They honestly enjoyed performing more than anyone I ever met," Willis said Tuesday. "Most of the people I know, most of my music peers, have had a lot of hits and everyone worries about the next hit. They just didn't care. They loved putting on those miniskirts and they loved playing those guitars."

Willis spotted one of their "Three Gals, Three Guitars, One Birthday" fliers on a booking agent's bulletin board more than 25 years ago and hired them to play at one of her star-studded "concept" parties in Hollywood.
It didn't take long for the word-of-mouth reviews to spread among Hollywood's burgeoning hip underground circles and soon they were appearing on such programs as "The Golden Girls," "Pee-wee's Playhouse," "The Arsenio Hall Show" and "Late Night With David Letterman." They had a large gay following,

The Del Rubio Triplets. were featured in People magazine and played on the international circuit, with tours in Australia and Canada.
After performing with scant notice throughout the 1960s and 1970s - traveling to bookings in their old station wagon named "Bambi" - the Del Rubio Triplets had finally made it big.

But the sisters never tired of playing charity gigs at hospitals and convalescent homes, offering rousing renditions of such popular hits as "I Feel Good" that quickly had patients in wheelchairs tapping their feet and clapping along to the beat.

When the first of the sisters died, they stopped performing.

"They folded up the tent, that was it," Willis said. "They always said to me that they were one person with three heads and that was completely true.

"They were completely dysfunctional without the other."

Born 15 minutes apart on Aug. 23, 1921, in a Panama Canal Zone hospital, the threesome remained unusually close throughout their lives. Devout Catholics, they never married, though they said they "had offers."

"Sometimes one of us would get sort of serious, but then we'd tell the guy: `First comes God, second comes our sisters, third comes our music. You'll have to wait in line,"' Milly said in a 1994 Daily Breeze article.

After the second of her two sisters died in 2001, Milly was left to carry on alone. She remained in the mobile home but in later years also stayed at Little Sisters of the Poor in San Pedro.

"It was a terrible blow to me," she was quoted as saying in a March 22, 2001, Daily Breeze article after Elena died. "Now, I'm left alone."

Willis remained close to Milly, showering her with 500 Valentine's Day cards in February after she sent out a Facebook appeal.

"She was the one friend I didn't feel bad about when she passed," Willis said, adding that the remaining sister never recovered from losing her siblings.

While it wasn't well known during the height of their fame, the three sisters were great nieces of Edith Bolling Wilson, the wife of President Woodrow Wilson.

On her blog, Willis penned this tribute: "I can't imagine that the world will ever again see something as magnificent and innocent as the Del Rubio Triplets. They were completely unaware that they were somewhat of an oddity and lived to entertain and make people laugh."

Milly Del Rubio died after a brief bout with pneumonia. Her funeral will be at 11 a.m. Friday at Holy Cross Cemetery, 5835 W. Slauson, Culver City, with Mass to be celebrated in the mortuary chapel. Burial will follow.

Donations can be made in her name to either the Little Sisters of the Poor, 2100 S. Western Ave., San Pedro CA 90732, or the Edith Bolling Wilson Birthplace Foundation, 145 East Main St., Wytheville, VA 24382.

[Marvo301]

Milly Del Rubio

[catlover79]

I remember them!!!

[JR1]

I didn't know who this was by the name, but of course knew as soon as I saw that still. RIP.