Summers: Grace Moore, Tennessee's Nightingale, among notables in Chattanooga's Forest Hills Cemetery

Grace Moore, known as Tennessee Nightingale, earned her fame in opera and musical theater.
Grace Moore, known as Tennessee Nightingale, earned her fame in opera and musical theater.

Among the notables in Forest Hills Cemetery is one of the nation's most popular singers and actresses of her time. Grace Moore's life was cut short at age 48, when she died in an airplane accident in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Mary Willie Grace Moore was born in 1898 in Del Rio, Cocke County, Tenn., and raised in Jellico, which had its "horizons limited by the lovely mountains that encircle it." The town "did not approve of the stage or of anything akin to the stage, and my father, though more broadminded than most, shared that particular prejudice," she added. (Her father, Richard Lawson Moore, was an enterprising soft goods merchant and her mother was the former Tessa Jane Stokely.) Grace Moore's musical talents surfaced in the First Baptist Church choir - when she wasn't playing on the Bear Cats basketball team or climbing out her bedroom window for a late date.

On being expelled from Nashville's Ward Belmont School, the fiery, adventurous woman with blue eyes and flaxen hair fled to Washington, D.C., and then New York City, where she "quickly slipped into the stream of the Village's Bohemian life, and a delightful carefree, stimulating life it was." Her break came when she sang Victor Herbert's "Kiss Me Again" in a contest at the Black Cat Cafe. But singing the same songs night after night in cheap smoke-filled cafes, sometimes with a bad cold, and studying with a second-rate teacher who pushed the volume of her voice too fast, brought her acute laryngitis.

Her doctor prescribed not speaking aloud for three months, so she retreated to a friend's summer home on Canada's St. Lawrence River. During days of solitude she vowed to subdue her Irish temper and lust for life and to find the right balance between work and play. The experience at the Black Cat taught her which songs were audience hits and how to project her personality and voice.

She returned to New York and on Armistice Day 1919 made her debut in vaudeville at the Palace in the "Chocolate Soldier." Next she sang her one song, "First You Wiggle, Then You Waggle," in "Suite Sixteen." Her exit waggle brought down the house.

While in New York, she became part of the city's theatrical and literary circles and befriended George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and opera star Mary Garden, who advised her to develop European credentials. Grace sailed for France in 1924, and in Paris plunged again into Bohemia. After additional training accompanied by dwindling funds, she returned to New York.

Her career took off in February 1928 when she debuted at the Metropolitan Opera playing Mimi in Giacomo Puccini's "La Boheme." A retinue of Tennessee family and friends witnessed her 25 curtain calls. Another dream was fulfilled in 1931, when she starred in her first MGM musical film, "A Lady's Morals." It flopped and her second film, "New Moon," did little better.

To regroup, she sailed for Europe. Onboard she was courted in French by Valentin Parera, a handsome Spanish movie star with whom she was to share a 16-year marriage with homes in New York, southern France and Connecticut. Not long after, she signed with Columbia Pictures in "One Night of Love," portraying a small-town girl who aspires to sing opera. That film became an overwhelming success.

Catapulted to national fame by stunning beauty, charming warmth and a rich, clear voice mixed with tempestuousness, Grace Moore came into demand for concerts and radio appearances. More than 4,000 attended her concert in 1934 at Chattanooga's Memorial Auditorium in what became "Grace Moore Week."

Her father, Tennessee Col. Richard Moore, had moved his family in 1932 to a home in Riverview to oversee his recently acquired Loveman's Department Store.

In 1935 she began a weekly radio show. Later she performed "La Boheme" at the Met 17 times, "Louise" for the Paris-Comique, and starring roles in "Carmen," "Faust," "Manon" and "Tosca." She sang before six kings and five presidents. In addition, Grace Moore became a superior chef. In fashion, her name turned up on the best-dressed lists. When World War II broke out, she entertained Allied troops, often paying her own expenses.

On Jan. 25, 1947, she sang to 4,000 people in Copenhagen, Denmark. The next day she and 22 others, including Prince Gustav Adolph of Sweden, boarded a Dutch KLM DC-3 plane. The plane gained 150 feet, banked, shuddered and crashed on the runway. All on board perished.

Jerry Summers is an attorney with Summers, Rufolo and Rodgers. Mickey Robbins is an investment adviser with Patten and Patten. For more visit chattahistoricalassoc.org.

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