“Shine on Harvest Moon” is a ballad written in 1908 by Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth, a vaudevillian duo who premiered it in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1908.
The original sheet music from 1908.
It became a song for the ages, recorded by many singers including Ruth Etting, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney.
Laurel and Hardy did it beautifully in “Flying Deuces” (1939)
In 1944, the fictionalised lives of Bayes and Norworth was filmed as “Shine on Harvest Moon”, with Ann Sheridan and Dennis Morgan. (Nobody can really explain why Ann Sheridan’s singing was dubbed by Lynn Martin.)
Dennis Morgan, Ann Sheridan
Love this number from NANCY GOES to RIO (1950), with Ann Sothern, Jane Powell and a surprisingly nimble Louis Calhern.
Vienna's Classic Hollywood
It’s fascinating to read the history of a song, especially a standard like this one from vaudeville – as with such information one gets a whole cross-section of history generally, but from a vitally human rather than dryly factual perspective.
This is even true of one-time hits, such as the haunting “Banks of the Wabash” which controversially has survived as Indiana’s beautiful state song.
Always remember Rudy Wissler ( dubbing for Scotty Beckett) singing ‘Banks of the Wabash’ in “The Jolson Story.”
I’ve still not seen that and must! Performed right, it’s a tragic ballad that is very moving.