Moore, Grace (1898–1947)

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Moore, Grace (1898–1947)

Noted American singer whose career included work in opera, musical comedy, concerts, movies, radio, and recordings. Born Mary Willie Grace Moore on December 5, 1898, in Slabtown, Tennessee; died in a plane crash at Copenhagen, Denmark, on January 26, 1947; daughter of Richard Lawson Moore (a manager in a lumber company) and Tessie Jane (Stokely) Moore; attended Ward-Belmont School for Girls, Nashville, 1916–17, Wilson-Greene School of Music, 1917–19; married Valentin Parera (a Spanish film actor), on July 15, 1931.

Moved with family to Knoxville, then to Jellico, Tennessee (1903); heard performance by Mary Garden (1917); made first concert appearance (1919); made first appearance in New York musical (1920); debuted with the Metropolitan Opera (1928); appeared in first Hollywood film (1931); starred in the smash film success One Night of Love (1934); made debut in London (1935); awarded France's Legion of Honor (1939); made goodwill tours of Latin America (1940–41); went on wartime USO tours (1942–45); published her autobiography (1944); Hollywood film about her life, So This is Love, released (1953).

Grace Moore was one of the first American-born singers to rise to the level of a star in grand opera. Her initial efforts to make a name for herself in the musical world brought her only to the Broadway stage and vaudeville, but by the age of 30 she had attained her ambition. Her career lasted for two decades until she died in a tragic plane crash following a concert in Denmark. Moore was a controversial figure for a number of reasons; despite her obvious talent as a singer, her performances were often uneven, and some critics had open reservations about the quality of her voice. Moreover, her mercurial personality—with a temperament that was strong even by the standard of opera stars—alienated many who knew her. Nonetheless, her work in film and radio helped make operatic music part of those entertainment media for the first time.

The future singing star was born on December 5, 1898. Her mother Tessie Stokely Moore was a member of a long-established family of landowners in the Great Smoky Mountain region of Tennessee. Her father Richard Lawson Moore was a recent arrival to the community who had come from North Carolina to help run the commissary of the local lumber company.

Uprooted when she was only five by her father's business ventures in various parts of Tennessee, Grace found herself living first in the large city of Knoxville, then in the small coalmining town of Jellico. In the summers, however, Tessie, Grace, and the other children returned to the area of Grace's birth. Thus, her country roots remained strong as she spent much of her childhood in rural Tennessee. Her first exposure to music was the fiddle-playing and other music that locals produced on homemade instruments for the annual harvest festival. An early source of tension in her life was her father's opposition—based on a rigid Baptist religious faith—to such frivolity.

Early on, the young girl gave signs of the mercurial personality that was to mark her life. The death of one of her younger brothers in 1906 brought on a family crisis to which she responded with truancy, foul language, and an episode of stealing. On another occasion several years later, she violated the Baptist Church's strict norms against dancing and was compelled to make a humiliating public apology for her conduct in front of her congregation. The event left a lasting impression, further undermining her willingness to submit to such restrictions.

An influence of another kind was her family's relative lack of religious and racial prejudice. Anxious to prosper in business, Richard Moore had cordial ties with Catholics, Jews, and even members of the local black community. His thrift and energy led to a prominent position as a dry-goods merchant, and his political work and connections brought him the reward of being named an honorary Tennessee colonel. As Moore's biographer Rowena Farrar notes, "Grace inherited her shrewdness, sales ability, and fierce drive to succeed from her father." Farrar attributes Moore's creativity, as well as her psychological propensity "to sulk and exaggerate," to her mother.

By the time Grace Moore left for the prestigious Ward-Belmont boarding school for girls in Nashville in the fall of 1916, she had already begun to set her sights on a career as a singer. She made a strong impression on the dean of the voice department at Ward-Belmont, but otherwise her several months there were a disaster. Her neglect of her studies, her lack of discipline, and her foul language led to her expulsion in January 1917. Twenty-four years later, at the height of her success, she was warmly welcomed on a return visit to the school, and she, in turn, established a scholarship fund to support students there.

Moore took the initiative in planning the next step in her education. She virtually compelled her father to let her attend the Wilson-Greene School of Music in Washington, D.C., by making all of the arrangements herself, then asking for his blessing. The school provided the aspiring singer with vocal training and an example of high standards. Singing in a local Baptist church, she earned her first professional income.

A crucial experience during her first year in Washington came when Moore attended a concert given by Mary Garden and met the woman who was one of the leading musical figures of the day. Garden's performance to benefit wounded Allied soldiers made the teenage girl determined that she would use her own musical talent to rise to that level of eminence. For the first time, Moore wanted to become a star of opera. In time, she would become closely acquainted with Garden, and the older woman would repeatedly encourage Moore's ambitions.

Grace Moore made her operatic debut at the age of 20 on February 20, 1919, singing an aria from Aïda at Washington's National Theater, during the annual concert of the Wilson-Greene School. Only a few months later, she gave up her place at the school, and, despite her father's objections to her pursuing a stage career, set off for New York. He followed, tried to persuade her to change her mind, then gave up after she promised to appear only in lady-like plays.

After an impromptu appearance at a singing contest in a Greenwich Village night club, Moore was rewarded with a short stint as a modestly paid performer there. Her success brought her a permanent place and a substantial raise at the establishment, the Black Cat Cafe. She also found a range of new acquaintances with connections to the larger world of the theater. Less favorably, her vocal cords suffered severe damage from her frequent appearances in the poorly ventilated cafe. The damage was probably heightened by the advice she received from a mediocre singing teacher—the best she could afford at the time—who forced the pace of her voice's natural development. Only a consultation with a doctor, P. Mario Marafioti, who specialized in caring for the throats of the Metropolitan Opera's stars, set her on the right track. Marafioti ordered a regime of complete silence for three months, and he cautioned that even then she might remain unable to sing again. She obeyed his instructions to the letter, hibernating in a friend's Canadian vacation home on an island in the St. Lawrence River.

By the close of 1919, Moore had returned to performing. A vaudeville appearance in November led in turn to a part in a touring operetta, The Chocolate Soldier. After some unsuccessful

auditions and a brief part in a musical that failed to survive its pre-Broadway out-of-town tryouts, she made her Broadway debut in Hitchy Koo in 1920. She soon had the opportunity to fill in for the stricken star of the play, and, in short order, she was a popular showgirl, squired around town by some of New York's most privileged young men. She became acquainted with such luminaries of the financial world as Bernard Baruch while joining in the social activities of the group of writers and composers who congregated at the famous Round Table of the Algonquin Hotel. Her romance with George Biddle, the son of a prominent Philadelphia family and a rising artist and sculptor, nearly led to their marriage, but a combination of ambition and wanderlust convinced Moore that such a marriage would be premature for her.

Still hoping for a career in opera, Moore sailed for Europe and settled in Paris in 1922. As usual, she found it easy to enter elevated levels of the social and artistic scene, developing friendships with Cole Porter and Noel Coward. She was also able to contact her idol Mary Garden who encouraged Moore's singing ambitions. Nonetheless, her declining bank account made it impossible for her to remain in Europe, and she accepted an offer from Irving Berlin to appear in the 1923 version of his Music Box Review in New York City.

Her appearance was a glowing success. One critic noted that Moore had "one of the rare soprano voices in which warmth and vitality vie with clearness and sweetness of tone." A darker part of her successful moment was the hostility that she aroused among her fellow performers. The length of her curtain calls, for example, led some to complain loudly that she should give others a chance to enjoy the plaudits. Moreover, the praise she received for her achievements on the Broadway stage failed to satisfy her ambition for an operatic career. In 1925, determined to move upward, she gave up her work on Broadway and returned to Europe for further study.

Three years of hard work with a number of European vocal teachers won her a contract with the Metropolitan Opera, and her debut performance was scheduled for the first part of 1928. Typically, Moore ignored a note of caution offered by a leading Italian conductor who heard her final audition. He advised her she was not yet ready for a New York audience and suggested gaining a year of experience in the smaller opera houses of Europe.

On February 7, 1928, in front of an audience that included many members of her family as well as a hundred fellow citizens of Tennessee who had come by special train to cheer her on, Grace Moore appeared as Mimi in La Bohème. Her performance was marred by her obvious nervousness in the early portions of the evening, but she received a wealth of good reviews. Even critics who did not like her performance, like W.J. Henderson of the New York Sun, praised the quality and warmth of her voice.

Her career now flourished. When Moore sang in Europe, her performance as Mimi at the Opéra-Comique in Paris drew an enthusiastic response from both critics and the audience. Soon afterward, she established herself as a vocal star on American radio when she appeared on NBC's "General Motors Hour." She then went on to try her luck in the movies.

Iam the girl who took the high hat off grand opera.
—Grace Moore

Although Moore's first screen test made her look overweight, she was offered a movie contract by MGM with the stipulation that she lose 15 pounds and then continue to keep her weight at an acceptable level. With daily self-discipline, she lived on clear soup, crackers, and tea to become the slim beauty movie audiences would soon see in 1931's A Lady's Morals. The film, a biography of the 19th-century singing star Jenny Lind , did not do well at the box office, and Moore's singing in the film suffered from poor recording techniques. She had no more notable success with her second film, New Moon. When MGM dropped her option, her film career seemed at a end, though she could console herself with the failure of other opera stars, like Lawrence Tibbett, to cross over into films in the early years of sound movies.

Moore suffered some kind of physical ailment in the early 1930s; Farrar alludes to the possibility that she underwent a botched abortion. In any case, she required a hysterectomy which ended her hope of someday having a large family. A brighter element in her life at this time was her romance with the Spanish film actor Valentin Parera, whom she married in Cannes on July 15, 1931.

The marriage weathered a number of strains. Moore's Southern family was reluctant to accept a dark-skinned Spanish Catholic. Moreover, her greater degree of professional success meant that Moore's husband had to adjust his life to her needs as a widely traveling singing star. He effectively took on the role of her business manager, and this led to remarks among their acquaintances that he was living off her talent in an unmanly fashion.

The impact of the Depression on the Metropolitan Opera made it difficult for the couple to rely upon Moore's career there. She soon turned to light opera and even to vaudeville performances, as well as frequent appearances on the radio. But her most important breakthrough came in 1934 when she starred in the Hollywood film One Night of Love. In it, she presented a variety of musical works, including substantial selections from grand opera. The film was nominated for an Academy Award, it drew large audiences, and it made Moore a box-office star. As a popular success, it proved that American film audiences would accept and even welcome movies that contained extended performances of serious music. As Moore herself later wrote in her autobiography, "It took grand opera to the ends of the world and brought a new public into the opera houses." As for her fellow performers, it "made all opera stars movie-minded."

In 1935, Moore began a regular half-hour broadcast on the NBC network. Singing weekly, she combined musical selections with a chatty conversation with her audience over topics concerning her life and her work. Her most popular song, "Ciribiribin," was an Italian folk tune which she had first heard in Italy on her honeymoon. The combination of her earnings from radio and the large sums she could now ask for her concert appearances made her wealthy enough to enjoy the privileges of a popular idol: a house in Beverly Hills, a staff of servants, and a flood of letters from her admirers. That same year, Moore had a wild success in her London debut at Covent Garden. At the subsequent party in her honor, she made the acquaintance of the prince of Wales, as well as other leaders of London society.

During the remaining years before the out-break of World War II, the increasingly popular singer continued to make films, to appear on the radio, and to tour widely in both Europe and the United States. She was making a film version of Gustave Charpentier's opera Louise in the fall of 1938 when Adolf Hitler's threatened invasion of Czechoslovakia raised the possibility that the project would be suspended. She remained in France in the face of a warning from the American ambassador for all Americans to return home at once. In August 1939, with war imminent, Grace Moore and her husband left Le Havre on a ship so crowded that cots were spread everywhere to hold 1,500 passengers desperate to escape from Europe. When the ship had been at sea for two days, word came through that the war had begun with Hitler's invasion of Poland.

The year following Moore's return to the United States was filled with a number of difficult developments. Her husband became seriously ill with tuberculosis and was forced into a long stay at the sanatorium at Saranac Lake, New York. Starting in the spring of 1940, Moore made an extensive tour of the United States and Canada; this was followed by a goodwill visit to Mexico sponsored by the American Department of State. The trip to Canada included being stranded on her railroad train by a blizzard, and the stay in Mexico was marked by the country's worst earthquake in 25 years. In the aftermath of the earthquake, American newspapers carried a story that she had been killed.

Under the strain of her husband's illness, Moore repeatedly exhibited the fiery temperament for which she was already famous. In one instance, during a second goodwill tour encompassing all of South America, she refused to appear at a party given in her honor by the foreign minister of Brazil because the minister's wife was not serving as the hostess of the event.

During the years of America's participation in World War II, Moore devoted much of her energy to entertaining the country's armed forces. "Wearing an exquisite concert gown," writes Farrar, "she would stride on stage and electrify the audience with her vitality, radiance, and good will." At the same time, her personal life drew increasingly critical comments. With her husband now an invalid, she became involved with a number of other men during her travels.

The war years also brought Moore into a new role as an author. The singer initially intended to write a book containing a collection of recipes she had obtained during her years as an enthusiastic amateur cook and patron of distinguished restaurants. The final product instead turned out to be the story of her life, and You're Only Human Once was published in March 1944. It soon reached the bestseller list.

In the final years of her life, Grace Moore toured widely in the U.S. and Europe. She was no longer the glamorous star of only a few years before: overweight and often distracted, she would sometimes lose her bearing on stage, and audiences found her forgetting the lyrics to a song or beginning to sing in the wrong key. Her singing technique, which had often been a target for critics throughout her career, now deteriorated dramatically. One notably bad performance as Mimi in La Bohème in New York City's Lewisohn Stadium in the summer of 1946 brought a cool response from her audience and scathing critical reviews.

Grace Moore performed for the last time in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Saturday, January 25, 1947. The following day, the plane taking her from Copenhagen's Kastrup Airport to her next engagement in Stockholm stalled after takeoff and crashed. All 16 passengers—including Moore and Sweden's Prince Gustav Adolph—were killed along with the crew of six.

sources:

Farrar, Rowena Rutherford. Grace Moore and Her Many Worlds. NY: Cornwall Books, 1982.

Moore, Grace. You're Only Human Once. Garden City, NY: Garden City, 1946.

Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Vol. II. Edited by Edward T. James, et al. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.

Shipman, David. The Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years. NY: Bonanza Books, 1970.