Nora Bayes (born Rachel Eleonora "Dora" Goldberg; October 3, 1880 – March 19, 1928) was an American singer and vaudeville performer who was popular internationally between the 1900s and 1920s.

[1] They lived in Joliet, Illinois, and in the hope of starting a stage career, she began performing at talent shows in nearby Chicago.

Bayes joined a touring company, performing in St Louis, Missouri and then California, before she decided to advance her career further and moved with her husband to New York City.

The show, soon retitled The Ziegfeld Follies, was a huge success and established Bayes' status, making her one of the highest paid female performers in the world.

[3] Bayes was the star performer, commanding a much higher salary than Norworth, and sometimes challenging the authority of theatre managers and promoters.

"Critics noted that Bayes succeeded through her lush singing voice, her sensitivity to her audience’s tastes and her willingness to make fun of herself, including jokes about her Jewish background and her failed marriages.

[2] In 1910, Bayes made her first recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company, and had immediate success with "Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly", an Americanised version of a British song.

Bayes continued to find success on the Keith vaudeville circuit, billed as "The World's Greatest Singing Single Comedienne",[4] before reuniting briefly with Norworth in the Broadway revue Odds and Ends of 1917.

She then launched her own one-woman show, and starred in the musical Ladies First in 1918, in which she appeared with young piano accompanist George Gershwin.

By this time, Bayes' success was diminishing; she made no recordings after the end of her Columbia contract in 1923, bookings decreased, and she was performing in smaller venues.

On news of her fifth marriage, one Australian newspaper reported her advice to wives: “as soon as one becomes bored, one should secure divorce.” The press hardly knew which was more shocking, her divorces or the fact she had walked out of her contract with Florenz Ziegfeld.

[10] The 1944 movie Shine On, Harvest Moon, starring Ann Sheridan as Bayes, is a highly fictionalized account of her life with Jack Norworth, who was still alive at the time but was not involved in the project.