Date: Fri 31-Jan-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

history-Grace-Moore-opera

Full Text:

50 YEARS AGO, A PLANE CRASH CLAIMED ONE OF NEWTOWN'S MOST CELEBRATED RESIDENTS

w/ cuts

B Y K AAREN V ALENTA

Fifty years ago this week a two-engine Dakota of KLM (Royal Dutch) Airlines

crashed and burned on takeoff at Copenhagen, Denmark, killing 16 passengers

and a crew of six. Among those killed were Prince Gustav Adolf, second in line

to the Swedish throne, and opera star Grace Moore.

At the time of her death, Grace Moore and her husband, Spanish actor Valentin

Parera, were among Newtown's most well-known celebrity residents. They had

lived in Newtown for ten years, having purchased a 1740 salt box house and

nearly 400 acres of land on Bradley Lane in Sandy Hook's Zoar District in

1936. The estate was known as "Far Away Meadows."

News of the crash stunned the world.

The Newtown Bee 's January 31, 1947, edition reported in a front-page story,

"The nation was shocked last Sunday as the news arrived over the radio of the

death that day of Grace Moore, internationally famed soprano star of the opera

and concert stage, radio and motion pictures in an airplane crash at Kastrup

Airfield near Copenhagen."

Grace Moore, 47, was on her way to Sweden, where she was to give a concert in

Stockholm as part of an extended European tour.

Today, Far Away Meadows is the home of Elin Hayes, her husband, Timothy, and

their infant daughter, Mairin. The Hayes have spent the past three years

restoring the Moore house (an article on the restoration appeared in the July

7, 1994 issue of The Newtown Bee ).

"Today many people don't remember Grace Moore," Elin Hayes said. "She's almost

forgotten - it's too bad because she was a true celebrity. But we have been

collecting memorabilia since we purchased the house."

Grace Moore's Childhood

Though no one in Grace Moore's family showed much of an aptitude for music,

she seemed to have been born to sing. Her memorable voice carried her from her

childhood home in Jellico, Tenn., to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

Her autobiography, You're Only Human Once , published in 1944 by Doubleday,

tells the story of a small-town girl made good.

In the book, Grace Moore tells about her home town in Tennessee, about Monte

Carlo and a "summer season" at Cannes dreamed up by Alex Woolcott, Donald

Ogden Stewart, Charles MacArthur and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The book is filled with stories of her Paris days when Noel Coward accompanied

her in her debut at Elsie DeWolfe's and she watched Elsa Maxwell, Edward

Molyneux, Clifton Webb and Jennie Dolly start the first respectable nightclub

there, and how Irving Berlin signed her to a contract drawn up on a tablecloth

at Ciro's.

A Southern Baptist, Mary Willie Grace Moore graduated from high school at the

age of 14 and convinced her father to allow her to attend the Ward-Belmonth

School for girls in Nashville until she should reach 16 - a suitable age for

marriage. But always headstrong, she sneaked out of the school dormitory one

night to attend a dance at Vanderbilt University. She was expelled, returning

to Jellico on the day President Wilson declared war against Germany.

Grace Moore then convinced her father to allow her to enroll in the

Wilson-Greene School of Music in Washington, D.C., where she received her

first real musical training. Southern families still believed a stage career

was scandalous, so, breaking her promise to return to Jellico, she ran away to

New York City, where - with $500 she had borrowed from a friend - she

eventually settled into an apartment in Greenwich Village.

She soon began a slow climb to stardom, auditioning and sometimes receiving

parts in various stage productions. The day after one audition, the piano

player who had accompanied her introduced himself. His name was George

Gershwin.

She sang in Irving Berlin's Music Box Revue in 1924, introducing such songs as

"Remember," "What'll I Do?" and "Always."

Debut At The Met

The early years of her career showed perseverance - more than once she was

told she was not good enough to become a Metropolitan Opera star. Her voice

was described as having a unique and fresh sound, however, which some credited

to her growing up in the South, and eventually she made her way to Paris where

she studied with Trabadello, teacher of Geraldine Farrar, Mary Garden and Alma

Gluck. She made her Met debut on February 7, 1928, in a performance that drew

28 curtain calls.

The job offers began pouring in. But the Depression soon came, and this meant

tough economic times for the Metropolitan Opera and other groups.

To help meet finances, Moore turned to movies. She starred as Jenny Lind in

her first film in 1930. In 1934 she landed a role in One Night of Love , a

musical being released by a then-obscure company called Columbia Pictures. The

movie - for which she received an Academy Award nomination - and another 1934

release, titled It Happened One Night , starring Clark Gable and Claudette

Colbert, put Columbia on the road to success.

Having achieved solid critical recognition with her rendition of the opera

Louise at the Met in 1939, she starred in the movie version as well.

Thereafter, she spent much of her time on tour, traveling throughout the

United States, in Europe and South America.

In the last chapter of her book, Grace Moore talks about her Newtown home.

"I have owned many houses, but this is our first real home," she said. "It was

only a little weather-beaten salt-box house, hung over with two great maple

trees that towered about the roof, set on a slope that overlooked rolling

hills and the valleys of an old and mellowed countryside. Inside there were

the typical worn beams, the big open fireplace where the family meals were

once cooked, and not a sign of modern improvements. It was so simple, so

unpretentious, so completely charming that the moment I saw It, I wanted it.

We finally persuaded the owners, Mr and Mrs George Waldo, great music lovers

and owners of The Bridgeport Post , to sell it."

A 1740 Homestead

A full-page article by Max I. Farber in The Hartford Times on September 29,

1939, featured a dozen photos of Ms Moore, her husband and their Connecticut

home. A view of the swimming pool shows a panorama of the surrounding

countryside, a view that has since disappeared because of the extensive growth

of trees throughout the area in the past 50 years.

In the article, Ms Moore pointed out two of the trees in front of the house -

the two tallest and oldest sugar maples in all of New England, she said.

Lily Pons, Jascha Heifetz, Lawrence Tibbett and other notables who had farms

within 25 miles of Newtown were frequent callers at Far Away Meadows.

The article continued:

"Miss Moore said that part of the house had once been used as a general store

and she removed a rug to show the original flooring where the counter had

stood. And from a shelf she uncovered the storekeeper's books. They revealed

much of another era.

"`Look at this' - " she pointed to the account of a parson who bought a quart

of gin every day. `On Saturday his account showed the purchase of two

quarts.'"

An article in The Bridgeport Post of July 16, 1941, described the tenth

wedding anniversary of Miss Moore and her husband at Far Away Meadows. Their

guests included such celebrities as Lily Pons and her conductor-husband, Andre

Kostelanetz; Mrs Neil Agnew of Southbury (Arlene Francis, at the time radio's

"What's My Name?" girl), Edna Ferber; and Elsa Maxwell - who drove solo from

Newport, R.I., where she had just been given the keys to the resort city - and

Tullio Carminati, who appeared with Grace Moore in her first film, One Night

of Love .

Her Final Tour

The cover of House & Garden magazine's August 1942 edition featured the new

red barn at Far Away Meadows on its cover. Inside the magazine were two pages

of photographs, mostly interiors of the house and the separate guest cottage,

now a private residence. Grace Moore and her husband constructed a large

addition to their house which included a huge music room with a high vaulted

ceiling.

Far Away Meadows "is home," the article said, "a place to rest and relax from

the many demands life makes on a world-famous singer. A place to farm

idyllically, to raise chickens, pigs, and vegetables for Victory. A place to

prove that oats can double for gasoline, contentment for adventure."

Although she was a familiar figure on Newtown's streets, Grace Moore

apparently sang only once in public here, on Memorial Day 1938 when she and

opera star Gladys Swarthout joined in a duet of "America" in front of the

Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Main Street. Miss Moore also led the

community singing.

She left on her concert tour in the fall of 1946 and had planned to return by

January 15, 1947, but changed her plans because her husband, who was ill, had

decided to stay at their villa on the French Riviera. During their absence,

Far Away Meadows was being used by former US Rep Clare Boothe Luce.

Although many items remained with the house after Ms Moore's death and with

subsequent owners, nearly everything was lost when the contents of the house

were auctioned years later in a bankruptcy sale, Elin Hayes said.

Mrs Hayes is in contact with Miss Moore's sister-in-law, Marian Powers, who

still lives in Greenwich, and with Ellen Franis, of Burlington, Iowa, whose

mother was Miss Moore's cook and father was the gardener. Bill Park, an opera

buff from Athens, Tex., also sent copies of many articles that had appeared in

various publications.

Grace Moore was buried in Tennessee. That week Congressmen Albert Gore and

Estes Kefauver paid tribute to her in the House of Representatives. Three

thousand people attended her memorial service at the Riverside Church in

Chattanooga, Tenn.

After her death, Far Away Meadows was sold to Garson Kanin and his wife, Ruth

Gordon, for $85,000.

When Elin and Tim Hayes' daughter was born on January 2, they decided to name

the infant Mairin Elizabeth Moore Hayes, in memory of Grace Moore.

"It isn't that we don't like the name Grace," Mrs Hayes said, "but there

already was a Grace Moore II."

That Grace, the daughter of Marian Powers and her first husband, who was Miss

Moore's youngest brother, was killed in an automobile accident on her way home

from college when she was 20 years old.