Nora Bayes - Make Believe (1921)

Nora Bayes sings "Make Believe" on Columbia A3392, recorded on February 11, 1921.

Music is by Jack Shilkret (1896-1964).

Lyrics is by Benny Davis (1895-1979).

A book titled "The Paris Wife" is about Ernest Hemingway's first wife Haldley, and it refers to this song. The author, Paula McLain, writes in her book: "There's a song from that time by Nora Bayes called 'Make Believe,' which might have been the most lilting and persuasive treatise on self-delusion I'd ever heard. Nora Bayes was beautiful, and she sang with a trembling voice that told you she knew things about love. When she advised you to throw off all the old pain and worry and heartache and smile — well, you believed she'd done this herself. It wasn't a suggestion but a prescription. The song must have been a favorite of Kenley's, too. He played it three times the night I arrived in Chicago, and each time I felt it speaking directly to me: Make believe you are glad when you're sorry. Sunshine will follow the rain... What was happiness anyway? Could you fake it, as Nora Bayes insisted?"

There are times when you feel sad and blue
Something's wrong, you don't know what to do
When you feel that way, stop and think awhile
Just make believe and smile

Make believe you are glad when you're sorry
Sunshine will follow the rain
When things go wrong, it won't be long
Soon they'll be right again

Tho' your love dreams have gone, make believe, don't let on
Smile tho' your heart may be broken
For when bad luck departs, you will find good luck starts
Don't grieve, just make believe

When your dearest friends have turned away
And blue skies above have turned to gray
Don't worry for it may not all be true
Here's my advice to you...

Reference books state that Bayes was born Dora or Leonora or Eleanor Goldberg. Nothing is known of her early life, and the name Goldberg was possibly a fabrication that Bayes herself fed to reporters.

She was born around 1880. She never disclosed where she was born or raised, perhaps because of unhappy memories.

She gives this information about her background in an article titled "Why People Enjoy Crying in a Theater," published in the April 1918 issue of The American Magazine: "I never would have been allowed to go on the stage if I had still been living with my parents, to whom the theater and all its works represented the lowest damnation and mortal sin. But I was married at seventeen and thus was free from parental discipline. I was first tried out at a vaudeville theater in Chicago. The Four Cohans were on the same bill...When I was a child of thirteen I had a phenomenal contralto voice."

The contralto had her Broadway debut in 1901 in The Rogers Brothers in Washington. She would not be in another Broadway show for a few more years but enjoyed enough popularity by 1904 to be among a dozen famous vaudevillians listed on the sheet music cover for "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis" ("Also Sung With Great Success by...Nora Bayes").