Where Are They Now?

Beyond the small Manhattan sector where songs are published and songwriters remembered, little is known of the men who wrote the homely old tunes which today are almost U.S. folksongs. Last week Douglas Gilbert of the enterprising New York World-Telegram traced the fortunes of some oldtime songwriters in a series called "Songs That Linger On-- Who Wrote Them?" Four songs and their composers:

"Sweet Adeline" (1903). Harry Armstrong wrote the music in Somerville, Mass., when he and three other Somerville boys were annoying the townsfolk by singing quartets on the gaslit street corners. In New York some years later Armstrong found a lyricist in Dick Girard who chose Adeline to rhyme with pine. "Sweet Adeline" had its best sales during Prohibition. Harry Armstrong now runs an entertainment booking bureau in Manhattan. Dick Girard clerks in the New York General Post Office.

"Sweet Rosie O'Grady" (1896) was written by Maude Nugent who sang as a soubrette at Tony Pastor's on Fourteenth Street, at the old Madison Square Garden Roof where Harry K. Thaw shot Stanford White. Maude Nugent is a grandmother now, gets some $400 a year royalties from "Rosie O'Grady." She lives with a daughter in uptown. Manhattan.

"Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet" (1909) was written by Percy Wenrich whose father was postmaster in Joplin, Mo. Wenrich and his lyricist, the late Stanley Murphy, intended their song to be "Put On Your Old Sunbonnet," sang it for Publisher Jerome Remick who got the words twisted. Wenrich wrote other songs: "Moonlight Bay," "When You Wore A Tulip," "Where Do We Go From Here?" Today, revenue from the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers where he has a permanent Class A rating pays for Wenrich's rent, lunches, his bar bill at the Lamb's Club.

"Shine On, Harvest Moon" blazed first in 1907, distinguished itself by coming back 25 years later, not as a sentimental hangover, but as a tune so fresh and melodic that many a youngster thought it was new. Jack Norworth wrote "Harvest Moon" when he and Nora Bayes were married. They sang it in the first Ziegfeld Follies in which Nora wore a white muslin dress, a floppy hat and Jack white flannels, a long blue coat and a pancake straw. The World-Telegram devotes its piece to Norworth, now a stalky, white-haired man who sells cocktail biscuits to supplement his royalties. ("Harvest Moon" has earned him some $35,000.)

Nora Bayes (born Dora Goldberg), a peerless songster* had four other husbands besides Jack Norworth (No. 2): Otto Gressing (No. 1), Harry Clarke (No. 3), Arthur Gordoni (No. 4), Benjamin Lester Friedland (No. 5). She died insolvent in 1928. still lies unburied in a common receiving vault in Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx.

* Some of the songs introduced or featured by Nora Bayes: "Down Where the Wurtzburger Flows," "Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?" "Take Me Out to the Ball-Game," "When It's Apple-Blossom Time in Normandie," "Come Along, My Mandy," "The Broken Doll," "Please Keep Out of My Dreams," "Over There," "Mammy's Little Coal Black Rose," "Japanese Sandman."

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