GRACE MOORE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 26 November 1936, Page 8

GRACE MOORE

HER HOLLYWOOD TIFF Miss Grace Moore, the prima donna of the screen was recently in London. After a 12-country tour, she arrived for a flying visit before singing in Paris, holidaying at Cannes and returning to Hollywood to keep a film engagement. During her 10 days in London, Miss Moore gave a recital at the Albert Hall, and a charity concert at Grosvenor House.

With her Spanish husband, Valetin Parera, her secretary, Mrs Askin, a large coffee percolator and a larger bouquet of carnations, Miss Moore reached London late one Saturday night and gave a hurried 10 p.m. cocktail party at her hotel before going to bed.

Everyone wanted to hear about her reported tiff with Hollywood, where it was said she objected to singing while milking a cow.

“That’s all over,” she told her inquirers. “Something I said and something they said was exaggerated into something else. The cow was the only one who wasn’t misreported. “I have just made ‘The King Steps Out,’ With Franchot Tone, in which a new recording technique was used. Next I go back to sing in ‘The Nightingale Flies No More.’ ” Miss Moore was greatly impressed by her reception in the countries she had just visited. Thirty thousand people cheered her in the streets of Stockholm, and everywhere she went she was mobbed. What amazed her was the love of music she found in every country and the demand for simple tunes. “They even made be sing a negro lullaby I crooned as a baby,” said Miss Moore. While the guests crowded round the prima donna, one of them discovered Miss Moore’s secretary sitting alone in a corner of the room. Mrs Askin told him that Miss Moore is busy writing her life story, and did not stop dictating even on the ship from Sweden. This autobiography should be interesting. It will tell of a girl brought up on a farm, wanting to become a missionary in China, whose ambition is fired by hearing Mary Garden. Grace Moore also relates how she ran away from school, sang for her food in a New York cafe, and step by step rose to be a prima donna and finally a world-famous film star.