Nora Bayes

Nora Bayes, born Rachel Eleonora Goldberg on October 3, 1880, in Chicago, Illinois, was an American singer, vaudeville performer, and Broadway actress whose career spanned from 1901 to 1922 on the stage and extended into recording and touring through the mid-1920s. The daughter of Rachel and David Goldberg, a Polish-born saloon keeper, she grew up in a strict Orthodox Jewish household before relocating with her family to Milwaukee, Wisconsin during her teenage years. In 1899 she married salesman Otto Gressing, and the couple settled in Joliet, Illinois, where Bayes began pursuing a stage career by performing at talent shows in nearby Chicago. She adopted her stage name during this period: "Nora" derived from her given name Eleonora, and "Bayes" chosen after a stage manager suggested she find a name more suitable for the theater, reportedly prompting her to select it from a recitation of the Hebrew alphabet.

Her early professional visibility came when Helen Cohan, mother of George M. Cohan, spotted her performing vaudeville in Chicago in late 1900. Bayes subsequently joined a touring company that took her through St. Louis and California before she and Gressing relocated to New York City. By 1902 she had taken up Harry Von Tilzer's song "Down Where the Wurzburger Flows," performing it at the Orpheum Theatre in Brooklyn, where it became her first major success. Over the following years she performed in increasingly prominent New York venues, toured nationally, and made multiple trips to Europe between 1904 and 1907, including a London debut in December 1905 that was immediately well received. She also performed regularly on B. F. Keith's theater circuit during this period.

Bayes divorced Gressing in 1907 and was subsequently approached by impresario Florenz Ziegfeld to star in The Follies of 1907, soon retitled the Ziegfeld Follies. The production was a major success and established her among the highest-paid female performers of the era. Her Broadway credits include this landmark revue as well as The Rogers Brothers in Washington, the musical Little Miss Fix-It, and the burlesque Roly Poly, among other productions. In 1908 she married fellow performer Jack Norworth, and the two became prominent media figures. Together they were credited with co-writing "Shine On, Harvest Moon," which was featured in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1908 alongside other songs they contributed to the show. Bayes commanded a substantially higher salary than Norworth throughout their partnership. Her tenure with the Ziegfeld organization ended when she walked out of the Ziegfeld Follies of 1909 following a dispute with Ziegfeld over the billing of Sophie Tucker; Ziegfeld sued her for breach of contract, barring her from other engagements for several months.

Bayes and Norworth returned to vaudeville and in 1910 appeared together in Lew Fields' production The Jolly Bachelors. That same year Bayes made her first recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company, achieving immediate success with "Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly," an Americanized adaptation of a British song. Their professional and personal partnership continued through The Sun Dodgers in 1912, after which their relationship deteriorated and they divorced in 1913. One month after that divorce, Bayes married actor and dancer Harry Clarke; they divorced in 1915. In 1913 she wore a green wig as a publicity stunt, which generated a local trend for colored wigs. She starred in the 1915 Broadway revue Maid in America and later reunited briefly with Norworth in the Broadway revue Odds and Ends of 1917.

Bayes launched a one-woman show before starring in the 1918 Broadway musical Ladies First, in which she performed alongside a young George Gershwin, who served as her piano accompanist. She also recorded George M. Cohan's First World War song "Over There," which became one of her most successful recordings. Following a new contract with Columbia Records, she recorded more than sixty songs for the label over six years, with notable successes including "How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)?" in 1919, "Broadway Blues" in 1920, and "Make Believe" in 1921. Over the course of her recording career she made more than 160 recordings in total. Throughout much of this period she was billed on the Keith vaudeville circuit as "The World's Greatest Singing Single Comedienne."

In 1920 Bayes married actor and entertainer Arthur Gordon, with whom she adopted three children; they divorced in 1922. Her career began to contract around this time: her Columbia contract ended in 1923 with no further recordings to follow, bookings declined, and she performed in smaller venues. She declined involvement in the film industry, stating publicly that the financial rewards would cause her mental anguish. She married for a fifth time in 1925, wedding New York businessman Ben Friedland in a ceremony held aboard a ship, and continued performing until 1927. Bayes had been suffering from stomach cancer for several years and died on March 19, 1928, at the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn at the age of 47, leaving an estate of $43,500. Friedland declined to allow her burial before his own death, and her coffin remained in a receiving vault for eighteen years until his death in 1946, after which she was interred alongside him at Woodlawn Cemetery in New York. A headstone was not placed at her grave until 2018, when a fan named Michael Cumella arranged for one to be added. A fictionalized 1944 film, Shine On, Harvest Moon, starred Ann Sheridan in the role of Bayes.