Has Anybody Here Seen Levy? - The Jewish Standard

Nora Bayes (1880-1928)

Listening recently to her sing “Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?” I distinctly heard her substitute “Levy” at one point-before changing it back to Kelly. (This was a 1910 recording.)

All I knew about her was that she sang while a young George Gershwin played, and complained that he fiddled around too much at the piano.

I also knew that she co-wrote “Shine On Harvest Moon” with her then-husband, Jack Norworth, and was the first to sing his song, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” (He wrote just the lyrics.)

Didn’t know that her birthname was Dora (hence Nora) Goldberg, and that she took the name Bayes from the Hebrew letter “beis.”

George M. Cohen had persuaded her to change her name ““ and insisted that she introduce his song, “Over There.”

Member of the Ziegfeld Follies. Married five times. Adopted three children. Died at 47. One of the few women to have had a theater named after her.