After failing singing auditions for the bands of Benny Goodman and both Jimmy Dorsey and his brother Tommy Dorsey, Shore struck out on her own to become the first singer of her era to achieve huge solo success. She enjoyed a long string of over 80 charted popular hits, lasting from 1940 into the late ’50s, and after appearing in a handful of films went on to a four-decade career in American television, starring in her own music and variety shows in the ’50s and ’60s and hosting two talk shows in the ’70s.

1. And I’ve never taken up a sport just because it was a social fad.

2. Bing Crosby sings like all people think they sing in the shower.

3. Emmys are wonderful and I’m thrilled to death that I have mine. But they’re representative of a specific achievement, where this sort of thing is representative of how you’ve grown in your own industry.

4. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t singing.

5. I earn and pay my own way as a great many women do today.

6. I never wanted to set the world on fire. So I never had to burn any bridges behind me.

7. The best money advice ever given me was from my father. When I was a little girl, he told me, ‘Don’t spend anything unless you have to.

8. When I was four or five, my father had a general store in Winchester and I don’t think the farmers could ever leave on Saturday afternoon until I had been placed up on the counter to sing.