Golden Age Stars Unscripted
Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2017 11:12 am
I'm not sure where this topic should go so Admins please feel free to move it someplace more appropriate:
So many of us are quite familiar with the voices, inflections and intonations of film stars from the late 1920s talkies on that we can identify them without seeing them. Sometime ago I was listening to a rehearsal of Lux Radio Theater from 1939 where George Arliss was performing in "Cardinal Richelieu." Everybody it seems flubbed a line at one point or other except Mr. A until the very end where he rather badly flubbed the name of the show. It occurred to me that this was likely the only recorded instance of this great actor unscripted. In every instance I could think of, I heard Mr. A's voice only in a scripted forum, never off the top of his head just exchanging conversation.
This got me thinking if there were other Golden Age stars who appeared on talk shows, which began flourishing in the late '40s but really took off with TV in the 50s and thereafter. This unscripted format is so common today that we don't even think about it but go back a few decades and it's a different story. I started checking around and I made two lists: the first lists stars who conversed unscripted, and the second list which could easily be much longer are stars who we can hear only scripted.
Unscripted:
Gloria Swanson
Douglas Fairbanks Jr
Al Jolson
Bing Crosby
Errol Flynn
Buster Keaton
Harold Lloyd
Charles Chaplin
Stan Laurel
Humphrey Bogart
Gary Cooper
Joan Crawford
Bette Davis
John Barrymore
Jack Benny
Claire Windsor
Marlene Dietrich
David Niven
Alice Faye
Fay Wray
Basil Rathbone
and I'm sure a few have slipped my mind.
Scripted Only:
Ronald Colman
Greta Garbo
W.C.Fields
Lionel Barrymore
Tyrone Power
William Powell
Jean Harlow
Clark Gable
Edward G.Robinson
I am hoping some N'villans can identify more who were recorded speaking off the cuff, even if only briefly.
So many of us are quite familiar with the voices, inflections and intonations of film stars from the late 1920s talkies on that we can identify them without seeing them. Sometime ago I was listening to a rehearsal of Lux Radio Theater from 1939 where George Arliss was performing in "Cardinal Richelieu." Everybody it seems flubbed a line at one point or other except Mr. A until the very end where he rather badly flubbed the name of the show. It occurred to me that this was likely the only recorded instance of this great actor unscripted. In every instance I could think of, I heard Mr. A's voice only in a scripted forum, never off the top of his head just exchanging conversation.
This got me thinking if there were other Golden Age stars who appeared on talk shows, which began flourishing in the late '40s but really took off with TV in the 50s and thereafter. This unscripted format is so common today that we don't even think about it but go back a few decades and it's a different story. I started checking around and I made two lists: the first lists stars who conversed unscripted, and the second list which could easily be much longer are stars who we can hear only scripted.
Unscripted:
Gloria Swanson
Douglas Fairbanks Jr
Al Jolson
Bing Crosby
Errol Flynn
Buster Keaton
Harold Lloyd
Charles Chaplin
Stan Laurel
Humphrey Bogart
Gary Cooper
Joan Crawford
Bette Davis
John Barrymore
Jack Benny
Claire Windsor
Marlene Dietrich
David Niven
Alice Faye
Fay Wray
Basil Rathbone
and I'm sure a few have slipped my mind.
Scripted Only:
Ronald Colman
Greta Garbo
W.C.Fields
Lionel Barrymore
Tyrone Power
William Powell
Jean Harlow
Clark Gable
Edward G.Robinson
I am hoping some N'villans can identify more who were recorded speaking off the cuff, even if only briefly.