Voices of Silent Film Actors

[donnie]

Here is Gloria Swanson singing. The song is Serenade, recorded 1929.

I always admired her speaking voice, but I never knew she sang. Her singing voice is quite good, too. She did have pretty pronounced vibrato, and I don't know that her style was that distinctive; but overall, I thought she put over the song very well. What do you think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ja1H69cSh4

[BettyLouSpence]

Thanks for sharing. I've never heard Gloria sing before, and it's not quite what I expected!

[donnie]

...and it's not quite what I expected!

How not?

By the way, sometimes she does a phrase in such a way that it reminds me a lot of Clara Bow's singing—although they're fundamentally different. Gloria's is a very high soprano, for one thing, which you can also hear in her speaking voice.

[BettyLouSpence]

For some reason I never expected her voice to be quite that high when singing, even though as you said her speaking voice was so light.

...By the way, sometimes she does a phrase in such a way that it reminds me a lot of Clara Bow's singing—although they're fundamentally different...

I wonder if that could be chalked up to how they were trained in the popular singing style of the day? That heavy vibrato seemed an indispensable feature back then; they may have been instructed to emphasize it.

[donnie]

I wonder if that could be chalked up to how they were trained in the popular singing style of the day? That heavy vibrato seemed an indispensable feature back then; they may have been instructed to emphasize it.

Yes! I think you're exactly right. And not only a heavy, but also a very fast vibrato. And those little upward glissandi on certain notes like "the sunshine" here.