Great Voices

[happyfilmluvguy]

Orson Welles and George Sanders!

 

[Lauren]

George Sanders. That's the first that popped into my mind as well.

 

[Quigley Brown]

George Sanders. That's the first that popped into my mind as well.

He's one of the few actors I can do a decent impersonation of.....James Mason, too.

Of course some of my friends don't know who George Sanders is so they don't realize how well I'm impersonating him.....

 

[LadyStardust]

Ah! I was begining to get despondent scrolling through this list and not seeing a single mention of George Sanders! He stands out most to me. Also, there's Rex Harrison, who I think has THE perfect British accent, Greta Garbo, and Jimmy Stewart.

Oh! I also think Nelson Eddy had a fabulous voice, and not just singing!

 

[Fletch]

they had voices then

Stewart had the only really Guy Next Door voice of the era's leading men - but when you listen closely his speech is very regionally distinct. Those "ah's" that come out like "aw's"? Uniquely western Pennsylvania.

Gary Cooper had a great "chest" voice.
Walter Pidgeon had a deeper toned one but more "head" ring.
Deeper pitched yet, there is something incredibly soothing and confident about the way Glenn Ford talked.

I like Robert Taylor's voice better than I do his acting. His delivery was awfully tendentious, but he at least didn't affect an actorly diction. He sounded like the midwesterner he was.

Maybe a touch too midwestern was Bill Holden. Deep, but nasal and a tad overenunciated. But he was great at passionate speeches, v/o narration and sardonic asides.

The best voice on old-time radio fo my money was the young Bob Trout. The dignified urgency he brought to the CBS World News Roundup - nobody has that on the air today. Another great old radio voice, very deep and refined, was Nelson Case (I knew his grandson in college).

Men don't have voices anymore, really. Not a lot of them. I don't think enough sing in public. Actors are no exception. Alec Baldwin's speech has finally deepened and mellowed to acceptable leading-man timbre - for years he just sort of burbled and rasped. The romantic hunk types? Half of them sound like passive-aggressive creeps. Too much rattling soft monotone. Too much Brando.

 

[Fletch]

leading ladies

Is it my imagination or was naturalistic diction pretty much a nono among the great America screen actresses before 1950? So many sound as tho they've been to finishing school (and maybe they were), dropping r's like the Dillinger gang dropped bank guards.

I love Barbara Stanwyck's voice. Sophisticated with just a little twinkly edge and a come-hither lilt about it. She was an r-dropper too, but in a nice middle class New Yorker's style, not a phony society-dame style.

Ginger Rogers talked like the gal next door, only funnier and sexier.

Lower-pitched female voices have a great appeal to me. Back in the day they were all foreign - Dietrich, Bergman, Garbo...Bergman's voice was as beautiful as the rest of her.

 

[Haversack]

Having already mentioned Eugene Pallette as having a unique voice, I cannot in good conscience omit either Marjorie Main or Jean Hagen for having equally distinctive voices.

Haversack.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Some of my best friends are women

My fellow Southerner Tallulah Bankhead, my all-time favorite.
The beautiful Diana Rigg.
Jayne Mansfield had a cute voice. Her daughter Mariska Hartigay has one of the few voices I can bear to listen to on tv.
Doris Day. Stefanie Powers. Joan Fontaine. Barbara Bel Geddes.

 

[Fletch]

Mmmm. Barbara Bel Geddes. In Vertigo. I don't mind that her diction is a touch legit. Especially with that dulcet and slightly hoarse croon. It's a smart-girl, horn-rimmed-glasses, stocking-feet-tucked-under-herself-on-the-couch voice.

 

[Spitfire]

Ladies first:
Lauren Bacall, Cat. Hepburn and Sophia Loren - especially when she speaks english.
The men:
Laurence Olivier and Richard Burton - my two favourit brits.
Jean Paul Belmondo!!! (Breathless and Pierrot le Fou!!!)
Tom Hanks. (He always gets me in the One ad. "We are not after your money. Only your voice...")
Sean Connery is pretty good too.

 

[Fletch]

Laurence Olivier and Richard Burton - my two favourit brits.

Ah, Burton. Welsh, don't you know. Some of the most melodious speaking voices are Welsh – it's that lilt. Listen to Ray Milland. Listen to Anthony Hopkins, or Terry Jones, or even Tom Jones when he gives an interview. Strange that they speak such beautiful English when their ancestral tongue sounds like you're coughing up a ball of string...

 

[Haversack]

Regarding the voices of Sean Connery and James Earl Jones:

I have been thinking for some years now that the Broccoli people are missing an opportunity by not doing a James Bond movie which pairs up an old James Bond of MI6, (Connery), with his occassional counterpart from the CIA, (Jones). Both back from retirement for some operation or other. Imagine those two voices working together with a good script!

Haversack.

 

[Jack Scorpion]

William Powell had a pretty good voice on film.

It was Powell's great voice that suddenly flipped his career upside down when the talkies started. He went from villain to top billing. Myrna Loy's story is the same.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Without a doubt - THE TWO JEANS! Arthur and Harlow. Other female voices I adore: Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, Kay Fwancis, and Lilyan Tashman.

Also, any bubble-headed telephone operator with a babydoll voice. They usually go uncredited

Allen Jenkins had the best male voice to ever grace the screen. A close second would be Ned Sparks! William Powell, Herbert Marshall, and Buster Keaton are runners-up!

 

[HadleyH]

Also, any bubble-headed telephone operator with a babydoll voice. They usually go uncredited
!

I like them too and on that vein ,the Queen of Bubble for me was Helen Kane with her totally girlish voice (have you ever listened to her singing "I Owe You"?, do it and you'll know what I mean)

In men, I suppose Sean Connery is OK.

 

[Ellie]

I know that I've mentioned it in another thread, but Vincent Price. He has such a suave voice. It thrills me.

Another thrilling suave voice is Orson Welles.

They were both great radio performers.

 

[dhermann1]

Anyone remember Alexander Scourby? What an elegant voice! He did a lot of voice overs.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Yes, Alexander Scourby. My parents knew him somehow. I have a few records and I get books read on tape by him from the public library.

 

[DaveTheDude]

What?? No one mentioned these greats-

Sidney Poitier had magnificent diction.
Edward G. Robinson had a distinctive voice all his own, sort of gutter rat with style.
Alec Guinness a class act who could ooze out every syllably with style.
Laurence Olivier for his quintessentially Shaksperean theatrics.

And lastly John Barrymore and Tallulah Bankhead. It doesn't get any better than these two!!

 

[Fast]

voices

NowL Kelsey Grammer (Rich, well trained baritone), Orson Wells (having done everything else you could do with speaking, seemed to take the largeness of stage, blend it with the intimacy of radio, and advance the art of the spoken word, not to mention the throat the man had). Oh yeah, you have to give Al Pacino this: that fellow can rip the british accent off Shakespeare and still have you believeing. Gibson can too.

Carpe Diem
Fast