Bayes, Nora

Bayes, Nora [née Dora Goldberg?] (1880–1928), singer, songwriter. The earliest history of the famous vaudevillian is clouded by uncertainty about her real name and her birthplace, but it is known that she made her vaudeville debut in Chicago in 1899 and her Broadway stage bow two years later in The Rogers Brothers in Washington. In 1902 she popularized “Down Where the Wurzberger Flows,” and her career progressed slowly but steadily thereafter. Major recognition came in 1908 when she left Al Fields, her old partner and manager, to marry and team with Jack NORWORTH [né John Knauff] (1879–1959). He was born in Philadelphia and ran away from home to join a minstrel show, later switching to vaudeville. The couple's act had one of the most famous of all vaudeville billings:
NORA BAYES
Assisted and Admired by Jack Norworth.
The twosome appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1908, where they introduced their “Shine On Harvest Moon”; The Jolly Bachelors, in which she introduced “Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?”; Little Miss Fix‐It (1911), for which she wrote many of the songs; and Roly Poly (1912). Norworth's career waned after 1913 though he still worked in vaudeville and penned song lyrics, most memorably “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Bayes was featured in Maid in America (1915), The Cohan Revue (1917), Ladies First (1918), Her Family Tree (1920), Snapshots of 1921, and Queen o' Hearts (1922), but it was in vaudeville that she popularized such songs as “Over There,” “Just Like a Gypsy,” and “Japanese Sandman.” Douglas Gilbert has written of the tiny, big‐voiced performer, “Nora Bayes was the American Guilbert, mistress of gesture, poise, delivery and facial work. No one could outrival her in dramatizing a song.”