Fatherhood Quote by Dinah Shore

"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"

Dinah Shore, Actress

About this Quote

It lands like a homespun anecdote, then quietly reveals how celebrity is manufactured long before there are cameras. Dinah Shore frames her origin story not in the usual grit-and-glamour arc, but in a small-town ritual: farmers, Saturday errands, a general store that doubles as a stage, and a child positioned literally above the transaction. That detail - "placed up on the counter" - does heavy lifting. She isn't just performing; she's being displayed, curated by her father and the community as part of the local economy of attention.

The line also smuggles in a shrewd observation about labor and consent. A four-year-old doesn't decide to become the town's entertainment; adults decide, and the child learns that approval arrives on cue. Shore softens the potential darkness with warmth and understatement ("I don't think... could ever leave"), turning what could read as coercive into comic inevitability. That's classic performer memory: sand down the edges, keep the rhythm.

Context matters: Shore came up in an era when show business was sold as wholesome uplift, especially for women whose public ambition could still read as suspect. By anchoring her talent in family and community, she makes stardom feel earned and socially sanctioned, not hungry or transgressive. The subtext is a blueprint for her later persona: approachable, cheerful, relentlessly professional. Even here, the crowd wants something, and she delivers before they can walk out the door.

Quote Details

Topic	Father
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About the Author

Dinah Shore (February 29, 1916 - February 24, 1994) was a Actress from USA.

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