Deep inside a long-gone Minneapolis hotel known as The Minnesotan, there was a red lounge called the "Panther Room," a nightclub that teased the senses and oozed with possibilities, where well-dressed men and women might tip martinis and exchange glances in the shadows.

And if you were a regular in one of those corner booths, you'd most likely hear Marie Shaw Wolpert setting the mood with a soft touch at the piano, playing "Melancholy Baby" before last call. Wolpert, who played a run of 55 weeks at the Panther, went on to choreograph shows and act in Hollywood, then gave it up to come back to the Minneapolis suburbs to raise a family, died on Nov. 19 in Edina. She was 89.

"When she sang the high notes, everything shattered," Rosita Barber, an old friend, recalled. "She was a vaudeville singer in the beginning, before playing the nightclubs, but if she'd had her life to live over again, she'd have been an opera singer. She had a voice that could bring down the rafters. She had that kind of a voice."

Raised in Chicago, Wolpert had spent time onstage from the time she was 6 and toured with USO bands by the end of her teens. Before she married Newton Wolpert of Minneapolis, she hit the circuit — alone — from Montreal to New Orleans, playing Club Alabam in Chicago, Leon and Eddie's in New York City, The Captain's Table in Los Angeles.

By 1951, she was looking beyond the Panther and auditioned in Hollywood at Paramount Studios, where she was hired to a long-term contract starting at $300 a week. Soon she was choreographing dance scenes and landed a part in a Bob Hope-Jane Russell movie, "Son of Paleface."

Journalist Will Jones, in his "After Last Night'' column for the Minneapolis Tribune, wrote: "Marie Shaw writes from Hollywood she just did a scene from an old Mae West film for her screen test — and blew a fuse at the studio. She gave her leading man a small peck. He says, 'Aw, come on, give me a real one. You ain't the first girl I ever kissed.' She says, 'No, but I lay odds I'll be the last.' ''

Marie Shaw Wolpert in 1951, the year she took a shot at Hollywood.

Wolpert raise three children and kept performing into her late 60s, staying sharp with a Twin Cities satirical troupe known as "The Intolerables." The cast would introduce themselves as "Funny, Flashy, Sexy, Sassy" — with Wolpert taking on the sexy role and cajoling the likes of Hubert Humphrey, who was a big fan of the spoofs. Friends recalled that she was especially proud of her racy parody of Betty Crocker, brandishing a big, red mixing spoon across the auditorium stage at the Dayton's in downtown Minneapolis.

Wolpert, they said, also had a serious, reflective musical side. She studied under opera teachers across the country, engaged in philanthropic activities including regular collection and donation of instruments to support music education in the Minneapolis schools. She also raised money for the Jimmy Stewart Research Laboratories and helped children in need of heart surgery.

Wolpert was preceded in death by her husband, Newton, and son, Michael. She is survived by daughter Sara and son William. A memorial service for family and friends will be held in early December.

Paul McEnroe• 612-673-1745