Grace Moore

Mary Willie Grace Moore was born on December 5, 1898, in the community of Slabtown, located in Cocke County, Tennessee, now considered part of Del Rio. The daughter of Tessa Jane Moore, née Stokely, and Richard Lawson Moore, she grew up in a series of Tennessee towns. Before she turned two, her family moved to Knoxville, a transition Moore later described as traumatic. After several years there, the family settled in Jellico, Tennessee, where Moore spent her adolescence. She attended Jellico High School, where she served as captain of the girls basketball team, before enrolling briefly at Ward-Belmont College in Nashville. She subsequently moved to Washington, D.C., to study at Wilson-Greens School of Music in Chevy Chase, Maryland. In 1919 she relocated to New York City to pursue a singing career, performing in nightclubs, including her first professional engagement at The Black Cat Café in Greenwich Village, to fund her vocal training.

An American operatic lyric soprano and actress in musical theatre and film, Moore earned the nickname the Tennessee Nightingale. Her Broadway career spanned from 1913 to 1932. Her first Broadway appearance came in 1920 in the musical revue Hitchy-Koo, composed by Jerome Kern. She subsequently appeared in productions including Suite Sixteen, Just a Minute, Town Gossip, and Up in the Clouds, the latter also listed among her verified credits as The Clouds. In 1922 and 1923 she performed in the second and third editions of Irving Berlin's Music Box Revue series. During the 1923 edition, she and John Steel introduced Berlin's song "What'll I Do," and her performance of "An Orange Grove in California" was accompanied by orange blossom perfume released into the theater. Moore also appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1931. Her final Broadway credit came in 1932 with The DuBarry, a short-lived operetta composed by Karl Millöcker.

Following training in France, Moore made her operatic debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on February 7, 1928, singing the role of Mimì in Puccini's La bohème. She then performed the role of Juliette in Roméo et Juliette, which led to a European tour. On September 29, 1928, she debuted at the Opéra-Comique in Paris as Mimì, a role she also performed in a Royal Command Performance at Covent Garden in London on June 6, 1935. Over sixteen seasons with the Metropolitan Opera, Moore sang in numerous Italian and French operas, including the title roles in Tosca, Manon, and Louise, as well as Carmen, Faust, Pagliacci, and Gianni Schicchi, among others. Louise was her favorite opera and is widely regarded as her greatest role. In 1945 she sang Mimì opposite Nino Martini's Rodolfo in La bohème for the inaugural performance of the San Antonio Grand Opera Festival. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s she gave concert performances across the United States and Europe, performing operatic selections and songs in German, French, Italian, Spanish, and English.

Moore's film career began when she was drawn to Hollywood during the early years of talking pictures. Her first screen role was as Jenny Lind in the 1930 MGM film A Lady's Morals, produced by Irving Thalberg and directed by Sidney Franklin. Later that year she starred alongside Metropolitan Opera singer Lawrence Tibbett in New Moon, also produced by MGM and based on Sigmund Romberg's operetta. After a hiatus of several years, she returned to Hollywood under contract to Columbia Pictures, for whom she made six films. Her first Columbia picture, One Night of Love in 1934, earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1935. In 1936 she starred as Empress Elisabeth of Austria in Josef von Sternberg's The King Steps Out. Her 1937 film When You're in Love included a scene in which Moore performed Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" in flannel shirt and trousers alongside a five-man band. That same year she performed the Madama Butterfly duet "Vogliatemi bene" with tenor Frank Forest in I'll Take Romance. Her final film was Louise in 1939, an abridged adaptation of Gustave Charpentier's opera of the same name with spoken dialogue replacing portions of the original score. Charpentier participated directly in the production, authorizing changes to the libretto, coaching Moore, and advising director Abel Gance. The film also featured French singers Georges Thill and André Pernet. Moore's films were credited with bringing opera to wider audiences.

During World War II, Moore was active in the USO, entertaining American troops abroad. On July 24, 1945, she performed at a gala event titled "Pacifique 45" at the Paris Opera House, organized by the French for the benefit of families of French war veterans, where an audience of approximately 20,000 gathered in the square outside the opera house. In 1944 she published an autobiography titled You're Only Human Once. Moore died on January 26, 1947, at the age of 48, in a plane crash. In 1953, a film about her life, So This Is Love, was released, starring Kathryn Grayson.