Grace Moore

In the sphere of popular entertainment Grace Moore appeared as an anomaly from a distant epoch, an opera singer whose path led her to motion pictures and even to hit recordings on the charts. Among the most striking sagas of rise, reversal, recovery, and loss in American show business, her life stands out for its dramatic arc. Born into the household of a traveling salesman who later owned a department store in Tennessee, she nurtured an affinity for music; propelled by a magnificent voice, she secured a place on the Broadway stage through sheer audacity. After attaining star status at the Met she moved into sound films at the dawn of the talkies, suffered career collapse at one studio under the weight of expectations, then gained a fresh start in cinema and on the concert platform thanks to maneuvering at a rival studio, only to perish a decade later in an air crash.

Moore entered the world in Slabtown, TN, where her strict Baptist upbringing made an entertainment career seem improbable and where she initially planned to serve as a missionary. By age 16, however, the self-described "skinny, long-legged ugly girl" had recognized her vocal gift and begun serious study. She pursued singing and music theory at Ward-Belmont College in Nashville, continued training in Washington, D.C., where she encountered Alma Gluck (1884-1938) and Mary Garden (1874-1967), and at 17 sang in a Washington, D.C. recital presented by the celebrated Metropolitan tenor Giovanni Martinelli, earning her first printed notice. After relocating to New York she talked her way into the 1920 Jerome Kern-scored revue Hitchy Koo. Further vocal work brought two unsuccessful Metropolitan Opera auditions in the early 1920s. Following several years in Paris she returned to appear in two Irving Berlin Music Box revues; her role in the 1924 production Tell Her in the Springtime resulted in Victor recordings (later RCA Victor) of "My Rock-A-Bye Baby" and "Listening," the latter reaching number five on the U.S. charts.

By 1928 Moore had joined the Metropolitan Opera, debuting as Mimi in La Boheme. She became known for French and Italian lyric soprano parts, frequently opposite the legendary Gigli in New York, and performed in opera houses in Paris, Cannes, and Monte Carlo as well as other European cities. Critical and popular opinion remained divided over her abilities; some detected insufficient conviction and technical limitations, yet audiences, especially male listeners, responded to her appearance and physique. Although no modern supermodel, she weighed a comparatively svelte 130-140 pounds at a time when many leading divas reached 200 pounds, rendering her visually striking on any operatic stage and offsetting any vocal or dramatic shortcomings.

Among those impressed was Louis B. Mayer, vice president and chief operating officer of M-G-M. At the moment the studio was converting to sound films in 1929-1930 with emphasis on musical subjects, Mayer cast Moore as opera singer Jenny Lind in the 1930 release A Lady's Morals. Despite modest returns M-G-M tried again with an adaptation of Sigmund Romberg's operetta New Moon, pairing her with Met alumnus Lawrence Tibbett. Pressures of screen work and the demand for commercial success proved damaging; after A Lady's Morals faltered she began overeating, and by the second picture she had lost the slim figure Mayer had originally signed. Having effectively forfeited her Hollywood contract, she was dropped by the studio in 1931. With operatic and concert engagements curtailed by the Great Depression, she returned to Broadway in 1932 and achieved her greatest stage success yet in a new adaptation of Carl Millöcker's operetta Gräfin Dubarry retitled The Dubarry.

While appearing in The Dubarry she attracted the attention of Harry Cohn, president of Columbia Pictures. At the time Columbia ranked among the lesser majors, its productions generally low-budget and modest in scope compared with those of M-G-M, Paramount, Fox, RKO, United Artists, and Universal, aside from Frank Capra's films. Cohn responded both to Moore's singing and to her restored slimness, yet he also perceived an opportunity: having learned of her earlier rejection by M-G-M, he could transform an actress discarded by Louis B. Mayer into a star and thereby demonstrate the superiority of tiny Columbia over the industry's dominant studio. In this way Moore benefited from the personal rivalries among Hollywood moguls who, like blues musicians who had migrated from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago, had known or known of one another for years, competed for the same venues, talent, and audiences, and rarely overlooked a chance to outshine one another.

Moore thus became Cohn's instrument for that purpose. He chose to construct a major musical around her, an undertaking Columbia had not previously emphasized, titled One Night of Love. The studio commissioned a score from Louis Silvers and engaged composer, violinist, and songwriter Victor Schertzinger to direct. The resulting film ranked among Columbia's most distinguished releases of the mid-1930s, an elegantly crafted drama that restored Moore to stardom. Cohn obtained a musical equal to M-G-M's best 1934 offerings and a female musical lead as appealing as Jeanette MacDonald, while Moore regained her career. Her recording of the title song held the top position on the American charts for four weeks. She followed with the successful Love Me Forever in 1935. Subsequent Columbia pictures met with less enthusiasm, although The King Steps Out (1936), directed by Josef Von Sternberg and featuring Fritz Kreisler's music, continues to merit attention. In 1938 Moore completed her final screen role in Louise, drawn from Charpentier's work and filmed outside Paris under the direction of Abel Gance, the noted director of Napoleon.

From that year onward she devoted herself to the stage, touring extensively throughout Europe and returning periodically to the United States for Metropolitan Opera appearances. During World War II she performed frequently in support of the Allied effort and later received the Legion of Honor from the French government. Still active after the war, she died in a plane crash in early 1947 while on a concert tour.