Una leyenda de amor

Landing in movie palaces in the middle of World War II, this biopic must have been a nice morale booster. Ann Sheridan and Dennis Morgan portray the real-life Broadway stars Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth with fairly entertaining results. Ann Sheridan was a wartime favorite and her performance is fun to watch, even though her singing voice is dubbed. The film offers an opportunity to hear some great old tunes, the best of which is "Time Waits for No One."

Offered as a biopic of Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth, this is stereotypical Hollywood nonsense about their bad luck, with a total of four songs written by the principals out of twenty-one. Ann Sheridan as Miss Bayes has her singing dubbed by Lynn Martin, and Dennis Morgan as Norworth presumably doing his own. Jack Carson and Marie Wilson pop up every quarter of an hour or so as a magician and his assistant, and Irene Manning yearns for Morgan and also sings some songs. The movie is in black and white until the final medley, and moves right along.

In reality Norworth was Bayes' second of five husbands, she prospered as a comic singer, and became the star of Ziegfeld's first two Follies; she walked out on the third and returned to vaudeville, while Norworth, after their divorce, carved out a very successful career as a Broadway performer. Miss Bayes died in 1928 at the age of 47; Norworth in 1959 at the age of 80, having had nothing to do with this movie but selling his name.

My main reason for watching the movie was Ann Sheridan. I loved watching her on the big screen. The song Jack Carson sang to Marie Wilson eked me too. Did not like it. It also was worth watching for the period clothes. All in All, Not Bad. It was also an education on the way Music was sold then. Something like In the Good old Summertime with Judy Garland.Marie Wilson really played a Great part as she was very Intelligent. She was really Typecast most of the time. I believe she played same type of Character on the Radio too. The Color was a Great idea. I think all Musicals should be in Color,especially 42Nd st. Even Dennis Morgan clothes looked better in Color.

Though this was far from the real story of Nora Bayes, Shine On Harvest Moon provided Ann Sheridan with one of her best roles while contracted to Warner Brothers. Dennis Morgan as Jack Norworth her husband and singing partner was also perfectly cast in his role. I suspect this piece of fiction was done because Jack Norworth was still very much alive, he would not leave this mortal coil until 1959. You can see Norworth in a dramatic role in Rene Clair's The Southerner and Norworth also did at least one short subject as song and dance man. I reviewed it here in fact.

Nora was a nice Jewish girl among other things from Joliet, Illinois and while the film makes no reference she was proud of the fact. Norworth was the second of five husbands she would have, there was no happy ever after for them. Only the title song and another song How Can They Tell That I'm Irish were actually identified with her. For whatever reason songs like Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly and Down Where The Wurzberger Flows were left out. Nora was known in vaudeville as the Wurzberger Girl in fact. She also introduced Over There at a bond rally during World War I. You can see Frances Langford playing her and sining Over There with James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy. In 1944 a lot of people were around who remembered Nora Bayes from the stage and no doubt commented on the fact those songs were missing from the film.

There were in fact a lot of period songs interpolated into the original score written by M.K. Jerome and Kim Gannon. Lynn Martin dubbed Ann Sheridan's singing voice and Irene Manning who played a rival performer sang her own material and well. One song was a real gem, Time Waits For No One was recorded in a best selling record by Helen Forrest.

Some years ago as a lad I attended a Yankee old timers day in 1958 and either Albert Von Tilzer who wrote the music and Jack Norworth who wrote the lyrics were introduced. What these two gentlemen collaborated on was Take Me Out To The Ballgame which should have earned them a bundle if they never did anything else. I can't recall which one it was, but both died within a few years of this game. Reference to Norworth's writing baseball ballad is made, but whether he wrote music or lyrics is unclear.

Also in the film are Jack Carson as a magician vaudeville performer and his dumb Dora assistant Marie Wilson. No one was ever as ingenuous in her performing as Marie Wilson, she set the prototype for those players right up to and including Jessica Simpson.

Despite the criticism Shine On Harvest Moon is a delightful film with some great acting, singing, and dancing in it.

When this film was made, "ghost singers" did not get screen credit for dubbing: Ms. Sheridan's singing voice was that of my (deceased) mother-in-law, Lynn Martin. (Incidentally, Lynn Martin was also the voice of Rita Hayworth in "Gilda" !!) We were delighted to catch "Shine on Harvest Moon" on 7/24/2000 on Turner Classic Movies: now we at last have a wonderful copy of my wife's mother's talented voice!