Shine on Harvest Moon

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.

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!

The comment posted before mine was unfortunately inaccurate. Lynn Martin did provide the vocals for Ann Sheridan in this film. While the studio had trusted her untrained but acceptable voice in a great number of dramas, thrillers and minor musicals before this, they were not ready to let her tackle a major musical with her own voice. The whole idea of a voice double is to sound as similar as possible to the person on screen. Lynn Martin was the perfect choice, even a certain nasal tone, but a much more polished sound. If you have the chance to hear her in quite a few low-budget musicals she sang in at other studios, you will recognize her immediately. She did not have to change her voice much to be a great match for Ann Sheridan and this is why she was chosen. Personally, as much as I love Ann Sheridan, i think she sounded much better with a professional singing voice.

A lot of well-known actors and actresses sang in scores of films but were dubbed just once or twice - that is not unusual at all. The same happened to Dorothy Lamour, Carole Landis, Shirley Temple and Patricia Morison (of KISS ME KATE fame) among others. So this is not even a factor.

(But it is true that Lynn Martin NEVER dubbed Rita Hayworth at any point.)

Too bad the entire film wasn't photographed in Technicolor. The story is very fictionalized, as were all Hollywood musical biographies. Would it be a spoiler to mention that historically Bayes and Norworth didn't live happily ever after? Norworth was #3 of Bayes's five husbands.

Interesting to note that in the earlier Warner's musical "Yankee Doodle Dandy", that Bayes is portrayed as a "heavy", taking Mary Cohan's song away from her.

Insofar as voice dubbing is concerned, all actors are ultimately dubbed, whether with their own singing voice or someone else's. Nobody sings "live" on camera. Not much different than today's music videos where the performer is only doing a lip-sync to the recording (and you thought they had all those electronic instruments and back-up singers hidden in the bushes, right?).

This film is still enjoyable for the music and the performances of the actors. I think it's well worth the time to view it.

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.