abridged performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. Traubel's last night club appearance was with Jimmy Durante at Harrah's Lake Tahoe in 1964. Other A baseball fan, Traubel was once the part owner of her hometown team, the St. Louis Browns. She wrote two murder mysteries, The Ptomaine Canary (serialized in US newspapers via Associated Press) in 1950 and The Metropolitan Opera Murders (1951), which feature a soprano heroine, Elsa Vaughan, who helps solve the mystery, as well as being a thinly-disguised portrait of Traubel herself. Her later years were devoted to caring for her second husband and former business manager, William L. Bass, whom she had married in 1938. (Her first husband, was Louis Franklin Carpenter, a St. Louis car salesman. The couple married in 1922 but soon separated.) Helen Traubel died of a heart attack in Santa Monica, California, aged 73, and was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. For her contribution to the recording industry, Helen Traubel has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6422 Hollywood Blvd. In 1994 she was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Her great-niece, Sarah Traubel, also became an operatic soprano. Notes and references Sources Gettysburg Times (via Associated Press), "Helen Traubel In Tiff With Met: Won't Sign", September 29, 1953, p. 6; accessed October 31, 2010. Hischak, Thomas S. "Traubel, Helen", The Rodgers and Hammerstein Encyclopedia, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, p. 297; McHenry, Robert (ed.), "Traubel, Helen", Famous American Women: A Biographical Dictionary from Colonial Times to the Present, Courier Dover Publications, 1983, p. 416; Metropolitan Opera Archives, Traubel, Helen (soprano), MetOpera Database; accessed October 31, 2010. Montreal Gazette (via Associated Press), "Former Met Star Helen Traubel Dead", July 31, 1972, p. 14; accessed October 31, 2010. San Francisco Opera Performance Archives, Helen Traubel; accessed October 31, 2010. Sicherman, Barbara, and Green, Carol Hurd (eds), "Traubel, Helen Francesca", Notable American Women: The modern period, Volume 4, p. 697, Harvard University Press, 1980; Star-News (via United Press International), "Helen Traubel, Former Opera Diva, Dies", July 31, 1972, p. 18; accessed October 31, 2010. Time, "Happy Heroine" (cover story), November 11, 1946; accessed October 31, 2010. Time, "Murder at the Met?", April 24, 1950; accessed October 31, 2010. Traubel, Helen and Hubler, Richard Gibson, St. Louis Woman, University of Missouri Press, 1999; Youngstown Vindicator (via Associated Press), "Helen Traubel Says Role with Margaret