Evening star., 1943-08-01
By Villa Martin.
NEW YORK.

NEW YORK.
Grace Moore has made triumphant
tours In every country In the world,
she has been decorated by kings,
but the experience she's remember
Ing these days was a ride with a
stage-door Johnnie in jeep
He was sergeant in a camp at
Hastings, Nebr., and so proud of his
Army buggy that he took a detour
on the way to the auditorium to
show the singer. radiant in white
crepe and crystal beads. what a jeep
can do when In a showing-of mood.
BY the time we arrived every
bone in my body had taken a diff
ferent position and was about to
present arms" Miss Moore, some
times reputed the Metropolitan's
most temperamental singer. was in
great spirits as she recalled the
rough ride the other day.
Miss Moore and l were in her
blue -and-cream hotel apartment,
overlooking the Central Park Plaza.
The fragile brocaded fabrics and
blond wood had a distinct French
atmosphere. quite unlike the an
tioue armor and banners with which
she surrounded herself a few years
ago on Park avenue.
Deeply suntanned, she wore a
jewel-blue print which gave her skin
an electric glow. Her blond hair,
the color of corn silk, was piled
high on her head.
She talks rapidly, with energy and
humor in precise accent, familiar to
80 many people because of her radio
work. Her speaking voice, like her
singing voice, is pleasantly and OBJ
viously cultivated as Southerners
often is, when she has had to tack
on final consonants where no one
in her family for five generations
ever before put one
Conquest of tho Services.
You might think that a singer
who had received a gold medal from
King Christian of Denmark would
be able to win soldiers without any
trouble. But Grace Moore would be
first to tell you that the Servicemen
are no pushoverS. One camp greeted
her with catcallS and booS.
1T was case of misplaced pSy-
chology. Some one had introduced
me with an eXtravagant summary
of the honors I'd received and the
boys, all keyed up to their war duty
and owing no man anything. re-
sented it. / suppose they felt l had
come to show off repertoire and
perhaps teach them a little music
appreciation.
when I walked out on the stage
and they continued to shout and
boo, I waited for a moment then
said through the loud speaker:
"'If you want to talk and sing
just come up here with me. I'm
lonesome, anyway They began to
subside and l continued, You name
the song. I'm not here to sing a
favorite song of mine. but to sing
anything you mention"
It's now musical history that after !
Miss Moore had raised her strong
lyrical voice in few songs the boys
burst into applause and brought her
back for song after song.
"As l sang I felt a surging re-
sponse from these boys like nothing
I've ever received from an audience. |
! could hardly hit the high notes |
there was such lump in my throat !
Their emotions fairly rolled and
broke across the footlights."
Miss Moore volunteered early for
the USO. Even before a schedule /
was set up she took her own accom- |
panist, paid her own way, sacrificing
concerts to travel from one camp
to another.
Cross Country and More.
Her camp shows have taken her
completely across the continent sew
eral times, but she insists she has
only started She's going into the
Carolinas next.
All of this travelling has served to /
remind Miss Moore that the one T
time honor student of Jellico. Tenn,
has no sense of time and place.
Il would wire friends in one part
OF Nebraska to meet me at what I
thought was a nearby city, to learn
upon arriving that the towns were
an overnight stop from each other"
Though she stood up on trains or
sat on her suitcase for miles, she
wouldn't have missed any of it. She
fell in love again with Nevada.
Where every one has house, ranch
and cabin" She sang in a baseball
field, was tucked behind a milk
truck by station master in one
town so the soldiers singing in the
station wouldn't hear her and expect /
her to join in.
Smoke which fills stations /
doesn't seem to bother uncultivated