Shine on Harvest Moon

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."

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.

It's 1905. Nora Bayes (Ann Sheridan) notices that single gal song acts aren't working anymore. It's either singing girl groups or couple acts. She tries to recruit her friend Jack Norworth (Dennis Morgan) for a couple act. He dismisses her at first. Eventually, he accepts her proposal. Their friend is magician, The Great Georgetti (Jack Carson).

This is a biopic of vaudevillian couple Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth. They would 'write' the popular 1900's song "Shine On, Harvest Moon". I don't know any of these songs. I don't know these performers. I doubt that they actually wrote the songs. They definitely did not come up with it while riding a carriage in the moonlight. I cannot comment on any other inaccuracies or even the time period. The music is not necessarily my taste, but I can't find any fault in it. The romantic chemistry is fine. They need a meet-cute, but they do have some heat. The story isn't much after the sleazy club owner early on. There is a fun bit with a magic act. I wouldn't mind a magician try that in his act for real. Margie is a fun dummy. They have the most memorable song "So Dumb but So Beautiful". Maybe they should make a movie about them.

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.

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.