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.
