This Is Your Life Dinah Shore

Eddie Cantor "discovered" Dinah.

OP - Nora Bayes, you ignorant slut...

Torchy

Thanks, R2. So I guess it really wasn't a compliment.

Nora Bayes was a BIG Vaudeville star and recording artist. It was a high compliment coming from him. She even got a bio-pic with Ann Sheridan.

I always hated her extreme vibrato, but I guess some people must like that kind of singing. Or maybe it wasn't so bad when she was young?

R6. It was much less pronounced in recordings and films she did in the 40s and 50s. She was pretty good at lite blues and swing songs.

Weren't her family like the only Jews in Podunk, Tennessee? ("She was born as Fannye Rose Shore to Russian-Jewish immigrant shopkeepers..."

R8 No. Practically every town in the South had at least one or two Jewish families that usually owned the local department store. My town had several. We also have a synagogue whose building turns 100 this year.

I was never partial to Dinah's voice, but she did excel at duets.

I never noticed it before, but Erin Napier from HGTV really resembles Dinah a bit in the face, and in the way she speaks.

OP, no one really wanted to be surprised by Ralph Edwards because working stars took it as a sign their career was over. It is kind of cool to watch these shows and see what people looked like when they weren’t necessarily performing. The family interactions are always insightful.

I remember when she used to sing on "Dinah!", her 70's daytime talk show.

I couldn't believe how awful a singer she was, and I was shocked when I learned she'd actually been a professional singer with a successful recording career.

Not sure what happened to her voice, but it was positively painful to listen to by the 70's.

She's quite good at R10. She has a feeling for jazz, even if she's not Peggy Lee, and didn't really pursue that route.

It's a pleasant voice, with that unmistakeable Dinah "scoop" on some notes.