Frances Rose Shore (born February 29, 1916), better known as Dinah Shore, loved to sing as a child. At times, her father encouraged her to sing to the customers of his dry goods store.
But by the time she was college age, her father thought she should pursue an education over singing. Apparently he didn’t believe she had much talent. She went to Vanderbilt in Nashville and graduated with a sociology degree. During her senior year and the following year, she went to New York to audition wherever she could. According to Michael Sims, she struggled to gain attention.
[A] producer at NBC summoned her to Rockefeller Center. As the accompanist played the piano, Shore opened her mouth and produced no sound–not one note. She fled in tears. . . . In auditions she was turned down by Tommy Dorsey, who didn’t like her bobby socks and sloppy joe sweater, and by a pastrami-chomping Benny Goodman, who would only listen during his lunch break. In January 1939 she was hired to sing for Leo Reisman’s orchestra at Brooklyn’s popular Strand Theater—for a princely $75 per week. Xavier Cugat heard her and asked her to record one of his songs, paying her $20.
She signed a recording contract with RCA Victor in the summer of 1939. After she sang at the New York World’s Fair, the Daily News described her voice as “smooth as silk.”
Listen to a recording from 1941 of Dinah singing “Stardust.”
Dinah Shore became the first woman to host a prime-time TV show, and she stayed on TV in different ways for decades. She was a household face, voice, and name. She has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, several Emmys, and other awards.
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