Frances Rose Shore
Dinah Shore
Television Category Star
- Ceremony was on February 8, 1960
Dinah Shore
Radio Category Star
- Ceremony was on February 8, 1960
Dinah Shore
Recording Category Star
- Ceremony was on February 8, 1960
Dinah Shore
Autographed Matchbook
Dinah Shore
Dinah Shore, 76, loses battle with cancer
By E. SCOTT RECKARD
The Associated Press
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) - Dinah Shore, who delighted radio and television audiences from the 1940s to the '90s with her breezy singing and Southern charm, died today. She was 76.
Miss Shore, who was recently diagnosed with cancer, died at her home after a short illness, said publicist Connie Stone. Miss Shore's two children and ex-husband, movie Western star George Montgomery, were with her when she died, Stone said.
Director Carl Reiner, who worked with Miss Shore on her television program in 1960, called her "the most alive person I ever met, absolutely interested in everything in the world and everybody in the world. And she was always sincere."
Miss Shore's television career spanned the 1950s to the early 1990s, when she had a half-hour talk show, "A Conversation with Dinah," on The Nashville Network.
In the '50s, the honey-blonde singer was one of the few women entertainers to find success as host of a TV variety program.
She started in 1951 with "The Dinah Shore Show," a live, 15-minute musical show.
The more elaborate "The Dinah Shore Chevy Show" premiered in 1956 and ran until 1963. Her singing of the jingle, "See the USA in Your Chevrolet," and signing off with a big kiss to the audience became trademarks.
From 1974-79 she was in "Dinah," from 1970-74 in "Dinah's Place," and from 1979 to 1984, "Dinah and Friends."
She was born Frances Rose Shore on March 1, 1917, in Winchester, Tenn.
A graduate of Vanderbilt University, she began her broadcast singing career in 1938 on New York's WNEW, joining the NBC network later that year and signing a contract with RCA Victor in 1940. A year later she joined Eddie Cantor's radio program; by 1943 she was starring in her own radio program, sponsored by General Foods.
More recently, her "A Conversation With Dinah" on The Nashville Network ran from August 1989 to March 1991 as a weekly show. She then did specials for TNN, including one in 1991 in which she interviewed ex-beau Burt Reynolds. She appeared on a TNN tribute show to Eddy Arnold in May 1992.
Her romance with Reynolds in the 1970s made headlines in part because she was nearly 20 years older that he.
She married Montgomery in 1943, and had two children, Melissa Ann Hime, born in 1948, and John David Montgomery, born in 1954. She divorced Montgomery in 1962. A second marriage to Maurice F. Smith in 1963 lasted only a year.
A premiere golf enthusiast, for more than two decades she played host to the Dinah Shore Classic golf tournament in the Palm Springs area. She was also a champion of animal rights.
She wrote a best-selling cookbook, "Someone's in the Kitchen With Dinah." [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385085249]
"I do seem to live for the present," she said in a 1962 Associated Press interview, "because today is so full and interesting that there just isn't time to worry about yesterday's mistakes or tomorrow's promises. An entertainer has to be an inexhaustible well. The more you give, the more you have to give."
