Grace Moore, the Tennessee Nightingale, Reaches Out From the Past

Grace Moore’s career, came into the public consciousness again with Turner Classic Movies screening “So This Is Love.”
Grace Moore, the Tennessee Nightingale, Reaches Out From the Past
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[youtube]zmP0KLI9P6I[/youtube] Grace Moore and Tibbett sing- ‘Wanting you 1930.
Grace Moore’s career, in particular its early years, came into the public consciousness again with Turner Classic Movies screening “So This Is Love,” the 1953 Grace Moore biopic starring Kathryn Grayson last Tuesday. Fewer and fewer people remember Moore, who through the many operatic musicals she starred in, popularized opera in the American consciousness.

Known as the Tennessee Nightingale, Grace Moore was a diva of opera. She was also an actress, starring in various motion pictures. It was said that her voice captured everybody who heard her sing.

Moore was born December 5, 1898, in Slabtown (now Del Rio), Tennessee. After moving to Jelico, Tennessee, and attending high school there, she traveled to France to begin her singing career.

After returning to the U.S. grace Moore made appearances on Broadway, she sang at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and was nominated for an Academy Award in her production “One Night of Love” (1934).

In addition, Florenz Ziegfeld, famous for creating the Ziegfeld Follies, a place to find theatrical entertainment, selected Moore as one of the most beautiful women in the world. Elvis Presley was rumored to have named his mansion, Graceland, after her.

Grace Moore once said of her success, “Analyzing what you haven’t got as well as what you have is a necessary ingredient of a career.” She died an untimely death the day after her last concert, January 26, 1947, when her plane to Sweden crashed and exploded.