travsd

Constance Moore: Show Business

A nod today to Hollywood star Constance Moore (1920-2005). Despite the fact that she had very little experience in live theatre, there is sort of a vaudeville flavor to many of Moore’s best known films, which is right up our alley. Just don’t mix her up with Constance Bennett and Colleen Moore!

Raised in Sioux City and Dallas, Moore started out as a big band singer and got a regular job singing on CBS radio. She broke into films as a bit player in 1937 but rapidly rose to featured roles. She’s W.C. Fields’ daughter in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939). Then came Buck Rogers (1939) with Buster Crabbe; Charlie McCarthy, Detective (1939) with Edgar Bergen; Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me (1940); Argentine Nights (1940) with the Ritz Brothers; Show Business (1944) with Eddie Cantor and George Murphy; Atlantic City (1944); Earl Carroll Vanities (1945); Earl Carroll Sketchbook (1946); and many others. Hit Parade of 1947 was her last movie, capping off a decade long film career.

Moore appeared in a single Broadway show, By Jupiter which ran 1942-43. During the Korean War, she embarked on a U.S.O. tour with Bob Hope and the Nicholas Brothers. In 1954 she embarked on a TV career that lasted about a dozen years, including stints as a regular on the shows Window on Main Street (1961-62), and The Young Marrieds (1965-66). Her last part was in a 1967 episode of My Three Sons. 

To learn about the history of show business, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous,

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.