Nora Bayes
Encyclopedia
Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...
and actress of the early 20th century.
Early life and career
Born Eleanor "Dora" Goldberg, with Dora being a pet or nickname, to a Jewish family in Joliet, IllinoisJoliet, Illinois
Joliet is a city in Will and Kendall Counties in the U.S. state of Illinois, located southwest of Chicago. It is the county seat of Will County. As of the 2010 census, the city was the fourth-most populated in Illinois, with a population of 147,433. It continues to be Illinois' fastest growing...
, Bayes was performing professionally in vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
by age 18. She toured from San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and became a star both on the vaudeville circuit and the Broadway stage
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
.
In 1908, she married singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...
Jack Norworth
Jack Norworth
Jack Norworth was a U.S. songwriter, singer and vaudeville performer.Norworth is credited as co-writer of a number of Tin Pan Alley hits. He wrote the lyrics of the song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in 1908, his most long lasting hit. But it wasn't until 1940 that he actually witnessed a Major...
. The two toured together and were credited for collaborating on a number of compositions, including the immensely popular "Shine On, Harvest Moon
Shine On, Harvest Moon
"Shine On, Harvest Moon" is the name of a popular early-1900s song credited to the married vaudeville team Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth. It was one of a series of moon related Tin Pan Alley songs of the era. The song was debuted by Bayes and Norworth in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1908 to great acclaim...
," which the pair debuted in Florenz Ziegfeld
Florenz Ziegfeld
Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. , , was an American Broadway impresario, notable for his series of theatrical revues, the Ziegfeld Follies , inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris. He also produced the musical Show Boat...
's Follies of 1908
Ziegfeld Follies
The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air....
. Bayes and Norworth divorced in 1913 http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/bayes-nora.
Bayes made many phonograph records
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
(some with Norworth) for the Victor
Victor Talking Machine Company
The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey....
and Columbia
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
labels
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
. From 1924 through 1928, her accompanist was pianist Louis Alter
Louis Alter
Louis Alter was an American pianist, songwriter and composer. Alter was 13 when he began playing piano in theaters showing silent films...
, who later composed the popular songs "Manhattan Serenade
Manhattan Serenade
"Manhattan Serenade" was composed by Louis Alter in 1928, with lyrics added years later by Harold Adamson. It was a hit record for swing era bandleaders Harry James and Tommy Dorsey .-Films:...
," "Nina Never Knew
Nina Never Knew
"Nina Never Knew" is a popular song with music by Louis Alter and lyrics by Milton Drake, published in 1952.Recordings that charted in 1952 were by the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra on RCA Victor Records and by Johnny Desmond on Coral Records .-Recorded versions:*Jonny Abeles*Kenny Ball*Tony...
" and "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?".
Bayes established her own theater, The Nora Bayes Theater, on West 44th Street in New York. She was portrayed by Ann Sheridan
Ann Sheridan
-Life and career:Born Clara Lou Sheridan in Denton, Texas on February 21, 1915, she was a student at the University of North Texas when her sister sent a photograph of her to Paramount Pictures. She subsequently entered and won a beauty contest, with part of her prize being a bit part in a...
in the 1944 musical biopic Shine On, Harvest Moon
Shine On, Harvest Moon (film)
Shine On, Harvest Moon, starring Ann Sheridan, is a 1944 musical film biography of the vaudeville team of Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth, who wrote the popular song "Shine On, Harvest Moon".-Cast:*Ann Sheridan as Nora Bayes*Dennis Morgan as Jack Norworth...
, which focused on her relationship with Norworth, played by Dennis Morgan, and ignored her other husbands.
Marriages and family
Bayes married five times. Her first husband was Otto Gressing, a Chicago businessman, and Norworth was her second. Husband number three was a dancer named Harry Clarke who also performed with her in vaudeville. Husband number four was New York business man Arthur Gordon. Her fifth and last husband was Benjamin Friedland, a garage owner.Bayes bore no biological children in any of her marriages. However, she adopted three children.
Death
In 1928, Nora Bayes was diagnosed with cancerCancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
and died following surgery
Surgery
Surgery is an ancient medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, or to help improve bodily function or appearance.An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical...
. She was buried 18 years later with her fifth husband, Ben Friedland, in the Woodlawn Cemetery
Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx
Woodlawn Cemetery is one of the largest cemeteries in New York City and is a designated National Historic Landmark.A rural cemetery located in the Bronx, it opened in 1863, in what was then southern Westchester County, in an area that was annexed to New York City in 1874.The cemetery covers more...
in the Bronx, New York, although inexplicably, her grave is not marked. On April 11, 2006, under the terms of the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, Nora Bayes was added to the National Recording Registry with the following citation:
Listen to
External links
- Footlight Notes: Nora Bayes
- 2005 National Recording Registry: Nora Bayes' "Over There"
- http://www.archeophone.com/product_info.php?products_id=55Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth: Together and Alone (Archeophone RecordsArcheophone RecordsArcheophone Records, LLC, based in Champaign, Illinois, specializes in preserving recordings of the acoustic era of the recording industry by remastering phonograph cylinders and gramophone records from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and releasing them on compact disc...
5007)] - NYPL Digital Photos photo gallery at NYP Library
- Sheet Music for "Just Like a Gipsy"; written by Nora Bayes and Seymour SimonsSeymour SimonsSeymour Simons, was an American Pianist, Composer, Orchestra Leader, and Radio Producer.Simons returned to Detroit after service in World War I and built a reputation as a pianist and songwriter, providing material for stage stars Nora Bayes and Elsie Janis...
, Jerome H. Remick & Co., 1919.