“DUBBING” FOR FILM STARS

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21985, 8 January 1937, Page 5

“DUBBING” FOR FILM STARS

INDUSTRY’S NEWEST TRICK , GIVING A VOICE TO ACTORS Doubling or taking the risks for movie stars is an old, old game, writes John Williams, from Hollywood. But dubbing is the artful industry’s newest and cleverest trick. Dubbing, in the words of Hollywood’s best-known dubber, Gertrude Neeley, is using the voice of the dubber for the stars, and teaching the stars to move their lips for synchronisation. For example, you adored Norma Shearer when she sang that song in “The Barretts of Wimpole Street.” Actually your ears deceived you. Norma sang not a word: it was Miss Neeley’s voice. You were convincingly entertained, which is all that concerns Hollywood. Vacationing in Honolulu, browneyed, Titian-haired Miss Neeley is under contract to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. She has dubbed for Elissa Landi, Jean Parker, Joan Bennett, Helen Vinsen, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, and Greta Garbo. Joan Crawford’s singing in “The Gorgeous Hussy”: that was Miss Neeley. And if Greta Garbo, humming an old Russian folk song in her next picture. “Valeska,” entrances New Zealand audiences, think again of Miss Neeley. . , „ Hollywood “ballyhoo ’ publicity hounds will induce you to the box office with new adjectives, “At last she sings,” etc., etc., but, believe not one of the catch cries. Miss Neeley does the bulk of Hollywood’s dubbing. Joan Crawford, for example, merely opens and shuts her mouth, silently, like a ventriloquist doll. Dubbing, according to Miss Neeley, is exacting. She sings for eight hours daily, with short rest periods, but hardest by far is her coaching of the stars in lip movements. When it comes

to singing. Miss Neeley says, most of the stars are “dumb,” as most singers are “dumb” actors. Miss Neeley learned to sing in Italian, German, and Russian at>the Cincinnati Conservatorium of Music, and under famed Marcella Sembrick at the Juillard Music Foundation, New York. All her songs do not reach the public. The studios kept her working for three weeks in dubbing a song for Florence Rice, who played with Charles Bickford in “The Pride of the Marines,” but all the work was cut out. Reason: Washington did not like the idea of Hollywood making a girl sing with a navy band! Hollywood summed up by the worldly-wise Miss Neeley: “You have to sacrifice everything for your exacting work. Hollywood is cruel, the survival of the fittest, the world’s greatest market for talent, though the values are pathetically and vulgarly exaggerated.”