Minnie Bagelman (April 6, 1923[1] – October 31, 1976) and Clara Bagelman (October 17, 1920 – November 22, 2014),[2] best known under the stage names Merna and Claire Barry, were popular American Yiddish and jazz entertainers from the 1940s to the early 1970s.
^NOTE: Merna Barry was not born in 1925 as had previously been assumed. The 1925 U.S. census taken in June 1925 gives her age as 2 years old. The 1930 US census, enumerated April 15, 1930, gives her age as seven (7), and the 1940 US census, enumerated April 4, 1940, gives her age as seventeen (17). Her family gravestone provides the April 6 date of birth but with the wrong year.
^NOTE: Claire Barry was not born in 1923, the year that had previously been cited as her year of birth, but in 1920, as all notices of her death give her age as 94, and her gravestone cites 1920 as her year of birth.