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NORA BAYES

© Joyce E. Eberly

Far from the bright lights of Broadway, in Joliet, Illinois, Leonora Goldberg was born. This girl, who would later become world famous as Nora Bayes, entered the world in 1880. She grew into a dark eyed beauty with a vivacious saucy manner and a husky voice that could "put over" any song she sang.

At the time of her birth, vaudeville was on the rise, and by 1898 it was an accepted form of family entertainment. After performing as an amateur in Chicago until Leonora (now Nora Bayes) was eighteen, she entered vaudeville. She acquired her acting experience performing in stock in San Francisco until she moved to New York in 1901. The critics became enamored of her, not just because she had a good singing voice, but because of her "cool and effortless" delivery that "overwhelmed" her audience.

Vaudeville, at the time she entered it, was essentially a sanitized version of burlesque. In burlesque, women were not considered "respectable performers" and performed mainly for male audiences. Variety shows, of which minstrels were a large part, composed of white all-male performers in blackface, were starting to lose popularity in the late nineteenth century. Women were beginning to make inroads in later variety shows, but the material remained "crude" and was still aimed at mainly male audiences.

Since Bayes was also an accomplished comedienne and actress, she flourished in the cleaner venue of vaudeville, which succeeded the variety shows. Her success there inevitably led to musical comedy, mainly in New York City. The 1890s and early 1900s of New York City were in a state of upheaval both socially and economically. As the population increased, the demand for family entertainment also increased. Bayes' style of performing was perfect for the times.

Not only was Nora Bayes a successful and accomplished performer, she was also in some ways a forerunner of the feminist movement, which reached its zenith long after her death. She was married five times, managed her own career, was a successful songwriter, and even established her own theatre, the Nora Bayes Theatre in New York City.

Undoubtedly, her most famous song, "Shine On, Harvest Moon," written in collaboration with her second husband, Jack Norworth, has been one of the most recorded and performed of American popular songs. It was introduced in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1908, and has been performed and recorded by innumerable performers up to recent times. As the album notes from a 1950s recording by the Cities Service Green and White Quartet states, "The song, SHINE ON, HARVEST MOON, was written and made famous by Jack Norworth and Nora Bayes, singing sweethearts of many years ago. And when the loving pair played any theatre, the lights out front blazed with a chivalrous message: 'Nora Bayes, assisted and admired by Jack Norworth.'" She and Norworth recorded the song for the Victor Talking Machine Company in New Yor on 7 March 1910, but because of technical problems the record was never released. For reasons never made public, they never re-recorded the song. She appeared in only one more Follies, the one of 1909.