No, intertunnel wags, that’s not a typo. I’m referring to Gloria Wood, the most famous singer no one’s ever heard of. Deuced difficult to find a picture of her, which also indicates her relative obscurity. Here she be:
Now, I could shoot fish in a barrel and list plenty of singers and other performers who were a big deal in their day, but are obscure today. Honestly, is their any difference between Leif Garrett and Bobby Sherman? And are you sure you could pick Bobby Sherman out of a lineup if David Cassidy and Bobby Goldsboro were in it, too? If you can, wait thirty years, and you’ll be the last person who can. Time passes, and everything and everybody, no matter how notable they might get, fades into obscurity, or gets blended into a recollective blur:
But I’m going to roll out Medford, Massachusetts’ own Gloria Wood, and even people born in George Bush’s second term will know who I mean, even if they never heard her name. Because Gloria Wood was the voice of Minnie Mouse. Oh, yes, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, at least on records. She was all sorts of voices, singing and speaking, on radio, television, and movies. She’s singing something in almost every Disney thang from back when they still used ink and paper and talent to make their cartoons.
If you’re a little older, you might remember this, because they’re no way you can’t. Jingles do that to you, man, at least if they hire Gloria Wood:
That’s just a notable commercial. Between the years 1955 and 1958, she sang on 2,000 more. Gloria Wood has been in your ear more often than your pinkie, I tell you what. And while this is way before my time, if you’re old enough to move to Florida and wear white shoes, a white belt, and white pants hiked up to your armpits, and drive 15 miles an hour on the freeway, you might remember this:
She was a hired gun in numerous chorus jobs, too. I mean, someone has to sing one word over and over. Might as well be someone talented:
If you watch White Christmas at Christmas, because you’re brave, and not afraid the Technicolor will drill your rods and cones into the back of your skull, you can watch Vera-Ellen sing and dance with Danny Kaye, Bing Crosby, and George Clooney’s aunt. Or not. Vera-Ellen’s skills were limited to hyphenation, prancing around, and looking like an anorexic with fetal alcohol syndrome working the Maybelline counter at the department store. Gloria Wood did all her singing.
Gloria’s dead and buried, now, in Glendale, California, but she’ll outlast “the UN,” I’ll bet, in people’s hearts, if not the mental phone books where we keep all the names.
5 Responses
One of the interesting stories about “White Christmas” is that it was originally supposed to be a Gene Kelly / Donald O’Connor vehicle, but they couldn’t do because of one thing or another, and became one of those movies thay had to slap together before they lost the contract.
From such humble beginnings are classics born.
Hi Ed- Thanks for reading and commenting and knowing things.
I got interested in the backstory of White Christmas for one reason or another. People forget, or never knew, that Bing Crosby was bigger’n Elvis and Sinatra and maybe Caruso in his day. Bing and Bob Hope ended up owning half of southern California, I think. Bing had a very rare voice, and was able to sing in that low register that really translated perfectly on the tube radios of the day. He didn’t want to do White Christmas because his wife had just died (I’m doing this from memory, so I might be slightly off on this), and he was depressed about it. They kept offering him more and more money, and a huge piece of the action, more than the producer I think, and he finally relented. Danny Kaye wasn’t their first choice, as you pointed out, or even the second choice, and he held out for big bucks as well, but couldn’t command anything like Bing. I think Kaye kinda stole the show.
The plot does look rather slapdash, but it resonated with WW II veterans and their wives. The lurid technicolor must have been a treat back when it came out. I think Irving Berlin got all the money that Bing didn’t get, for White Christmas. It was way before my time, but we watch it yearly for its genial nature.
I was driving around France in September of 1977 when I heard that Bing Crosby had died. I couldn’t understand the French announcer, but as soon as I heard “White Christmas” I knew that Crosby had died. Why else would a French radio play “White Christmas” in September?
“you can even spread Peter Pan on a crunchy potato chip”
I’ve recently learned that in espanol, peanut butter is called crema de cacahuate. To the gringo ear, cacahuate sounds like a word you repeat three times to get a rumplestiltskin, or maybe beetlejuice, to appear. And picturing cacahuate on a potato chips is giving me hives.