AccuRadio Song Of The Day-Betty Wand

Artist:Betty Wand

Song:The Parisians

Album:Gigi: Music from the Original Motion Picture

In the old days of Hollywood, It was common practice for the studios to use a ghost singer to dub an actor's singing voice. Probably the most famous ghost singer was Marni Nixon who dubbed Natalie Wood's singing voice in West Side Story and Audrey Hepburn's voice in My Fair Lady. I occasionally feature these singers as though Marni is known to most fans, others are unknown like Betty Wand. She dubbed Leslie Caron's singing voice in the 1958 film Gigi. Oh, you didn't know about that? Well, not only was dubbing common practice but the audience wasn't supposed to know about it. Fans got upset when they found out years later. This is no longer done in Hollywood. It's unnecessary and producers wouldn't get away with it today. Besides, they can always use autotune which is commonly used for Katy Perry among others. You're not supposed to know about that either. Betty Wand was born Aug. 10, 1923 in Venice, CA. In the 40s, she sang in the big bands of Xavier Cugat, Horace Heidt and Ray Conniff. She dubbed Shirley Temple's singing voice in the 1949 film Adventures in Baltimore and Esther Williams' singing voice in the 1953 film Easy to Love. When MGM producer Arthur Freed was looking to produce a film of the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical Gigi, he wanted Audrey Hepburn to star. Well, she can't sing and dubbing would have been necessary. When Lerner went to Paris to offer the role to her, she said no. Next Lerner went to London to meet with Leslie Caron. He discovered that Leslie had lost her French accent. So they would have had to dub her anyway. Leslie wanted to do her own singing and they let her sing in the studio. Then they brought Betty in. Leslie never knew even when she saw the film at the premiere. Rhino released an expanded 2CD edition of the Gigi soundtrack which includes bonus tracks of Leslie singing songs from the film. It also contains some dialogue and a lot of Andre Previn's score that was not on the original version. Betty also dubbed Rita Moreno's singing voice on A Boy Like That in the 1961 film West Side Story. She also appeared as a singer in the TV series' The Thin Man and Dr. Kildare. Betty had other business interests and she said she never wanted to be an actor anyway. She died Sept 12, 2003 at age 80. Here's a video for The Parisians by Betty Wand from the 1958 film Gigi.