Toots Deville was known as the wife of musician Willy Deville, and for her work as his personal manager and association with the band Mink DeVille during the 1970s.
21 Facts About Toots Deville
1.
2.
Toots Deville was a model and appeared in rock magazines like Creem.
3.
Toots Deville was adopted and her birth name and family is unknown.
4.
Toots Deville stated her birth family was of Pima descent.
5.
Toots Deville was an only child and her parents later divorced.
6.
Toots Deville's father was Philip Berlinsky, an immigrant from Poland that started the Berle Apparel Group, which still operates today.
7.
Toots Deville attended Dolan Middle School in Stamford, and ran away from home to New York City, and became addicted to drugs.
8.
Toots Deville's parents sent her to therapy and rehab, and eventually she was sent to boarding school at Windsor Mountain in Massachusetts.
9.
Toots Deville dropped out of school and became pregnant at age 18 in 1968 by a man named Brian, with whom she had her son Sean.
10.
Toots Deville was briefly married to a man named Robert Martin during this time.
11.
Toots Deville met musician Willy Deville as a child while living in Stamford in the late 60s.
12.
Mink DeVille became the house band for CBGB from 1975 to 1978, where Toots was seen often.
13.
Toots Deville is credited for managing her husband's early music career and influencing the punk rock era of music.
14.
Toots Deville would go on tour with Mink DeVille in Europe, and is credited with creating their stage costumes.
15.
Toots Deville was known for her outlandish behavior and drug use.
16.
Toots Deville was very protective of her husband and various media reports stated how she would pull out knives on women if they flirted with him.
17.
Toots Deville had jet black hair she would keep often in a beehive hairstyle, and had a nose ring and tattoos, which was still uncommon in the early 1970s.
18.
Toots Deville posed as a model for rock magazines like Creem.
19.
Toots Deville left the rock music scene behind her, divorced from Deville in 1984, and moved to upstate New York, where she stopped using drugs and became a health-care worker until she was diagnosed with cancer.
20.
Toots Deville re-married to Stephen Martincak, and she was known as Susan Martincak toward the end of her life.
21.
Toots Deville died on August 19,2004, at the age of 54 from cancer, in Monticello, New York.