Is This MARILYN MONROE singing?

[mr6666]

seems there's a big FB debate as to whether this is Monroe's voice,

or was it dubbed??

(gotta say I never heard her sound like THIS before)

[slaytonf]

IMDB says yes (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041571/soundtrack/?ref_=tt_trv_snd).  Sounds like her to me, though not like she later sounded.

[Tikisoo]

Sounds just like MM singing to me.

[sewhite2000]

I think of her singing in Some Like It Hot, Bus Stop and Gentlmen Prefer Blondes, and the voice I hear here sounds pretty consistent with my memory of what I hear in those films. By the time the films I mentioned came out, she was Marilyn Monroe, icon, and I imagine they got her to play up the breathiness and the Betty Boop-isms, so there's some difference. She seems more polished and perhaps more thoroughly coached in this early career performance. But I would say it could be the same voice, which may have never been hers, so who knows?

[ElCid]

I receive catalogs for CD's of old recordings.  Monroe is listed as one who had at least one record.  I think it may have been a studio thing similar to what TV did with some young actors.

[Sepiatone]

I don't know just how much dubbing of "singers" voices was done in the late '40's.  Or if this movie boasted a budget that would allow for it, so I'll assume it was Marilyn singing.  First time seeing this for me, and I gotta say.....

Should shut the "she could never act" mavens up.  IMO.

Sepiatone

[JamesJazGuitar]

1 minute ago, Sepiatone said:

I don't know just how much dubbing of "singers" voices was done in the late '40's.  Or if this movie boasted a budget that would allow for it, so I'll assume it was Marilyn singing.  First time seeing this for me, and I gotta say.....

Should shut the "she could never act" mavens up.  IMO.

Sepiatone

Monroe does her own singing in the film.    It is only Adele Jergens that was dubbed by Virginia Rees in the film.)

[ElCid]

Google Marilyn Monroe CD's and you will find a few.  So obviously she did sing and it was recorded for sales as records.

[mr6666]

never disputed that she DID sing........

just that the voice in "Ladies/Chorus" was not her voice as I remembered it

(& found nothing on the net to definitely prove otherwise)

[cineman]

In my ignorance, I never knew she could sing until I watched  The River of No Return, at first I thought they were dubbing but soon realized it was her voice. Not a bad singer. 

[Sepiatone]

And not(IMHO) really not all that bad of an actress.  Sadly, I do know a few( in their 30's) who've never seen a  Marilyn Monroe movie who are convinced, mostly by what they've read somewhere online, that she was the worst actress to ever be on film.  

Sepiatone

[DougieB]

On 11/6/2021 at 7:19 PM, mr6666 said:

never disputed that she DID sing........

just that the voice in "Ladies/Chorus" was not her voice as I remembered it

(& found nothing on the net to definitely prove otherwise)

I'm no expert on singing and vocal styles, so I'm basically talking through my hat, but at the time Marilyn had a short-term contract with Columbia which was not renewed, so she was in no position to call any shots. Bigger stars than she, singers and non-singers alike, routinely had vocals "sweetened" or replaced by professional singers the studios kept on  tap, working without credit, so anonymously that it was many years before the practice and the singers involved became known. So I wouldn't necessarily trust IMDb to get it right. Marilyn was rightly known as a vocalist and even had a recording contract with MGM Records at one point, separate from her movie contract with Fox, a situation Fox moved to rectify by creating their own record label. (Just as a point of interest, it was the reason her vocals had to be replicated by Dolores Gray on the Decca soundtrack album for There's No Business Like Show Business, because Marilyn was contracted elsewhere.) 

There's a really interesting YouTube channel by Mark Milano called Lost Vocals, on which he shows the results of many years of tracking down from collectors and other sources the original vocal tracks which were altered or replaced for the final release, giving credit to the actual singers. He also collected some informative stories about how it all went down. In some cases only certain passages or phrases were replaced, in others the entire vocal. My big takeaway was that some of the vocalists who did the dubbing were so good at capturing both the speaking and singing styles of the actresses that it would be extremely difficult to detect the ruse if you weren't told. Which does make me wonder about the Ladies of the Chorus vocals. There's the trademark Marilyn trill and slightly stilted phrasing, but overall there's a polish which argues against the vocals being entirely Marilyn's, especially in the second number. As I said, the behind the scenes dubbing talent were expected to keep mum about it and, as Marilyn got more famous, there would likely have been more reason to cover up any help she may have had vocally. Until Marni Nixon broke away from the pack there was a wall of silence around the whole process, so there's still a lot we may never know about credit where credit is due. 

Was there any kind of consensus in the big FB debate or was it all over the place?

[mr6666]

Thanks, I can buy that.......

& "Was there any kind of consensus in the big FB debate or was it all over the place? "

No........it just continued, no one seemed to have real proof one way or the other

[slaytonf]

Let me see if I got this right.  Because the singing in Ladies of the Chorus (1948) doesn't sound like Marilyn Monroe in other movies, it must be dubbed.  So the producers decided to substitute a voice that, though competent, lacks her engaging charisma and style.

It seems simpler to see the difference the result of it being early in her career, and not having hit on the formula of her sound yet.  

[DougieB]

15 hours ago, slaytonf said:

Let me see if I got this right.  Because the singing in Ladies of the Chorus (1948) doesn't sound like Marilyn Monroe in other movies, it must be dubbed.  So the producers decided to substitute a voice that, though competent, lacks her engaging charisma and style.

It seems simpler to see the difference the result of it being early in her career, and not having hit on the formula of her sound yet.  

What I said wasn't that definitive. I said the traits you'd expect were there but that there seemed to be a question whether the vocals were entirely Marilyn's. Even accomplished singers sometimes had help with the high notes or passages which were out of their range. Recording engineers learned  to layer in another voice when a singer's voice showed strain at some point, just as they could layer in other instruments when called for. Bette Midler, in concerts later in her career, had the class to introduce along with the band the woman who helped her "croak out the high notes", a generosity which singers don't often display.

However, last night I watched the Columbia musical Time Out For Rhythm (1941) which TCM had broadcast several days earlier and for no particular reason it made me remember Fred Karger. Later in the decade Fred Karger was a musical supervisor at Columbia and he and Marilyn were an "item" (according to numerous biographies) and, even though she'd been married, she later described him as her first big love. He believed in Marilyn and worked very closely with her, including  during Ladies of the Chorus, sort of the way Roger Edens worked with Judy Garland at MGM. I assume he wanted only the best for her, which could explain the polish and precision which made me question. Once I remembered his involvement, the stronger argument appears to be that he would have wanted her to prove herself and to really shine, so that hard work would have been the solution, not studio tricks, so I guess I'm eating my words. (Not the first time.) Anyway, she apparently used her time at Columbia well and also studied with Natasha Lytess, a Columbia acing coach who'd follow Marilyn when she left Columbia and was still with her when she signed with Fox. Legend has it that Marilyn wouldn't "go yachting" with Harry Cohn so he let her six-month contract lapse, which was a humiliation for him when she became world famous. 

[laffite]

The voice sounds (more or less) like her, but i am surprised that she would sound so polished at this early date. Her later songs, at least some of them, was that real breathy voice. No sign of that here. But if IMDB says it is her, then is probably true.

[Taz]

I bought this CD many years ago

 

And let's not forget, "Happy birthday, Mr. President"

 

 

[slaytonf]

1 hour ago, Taz said:

And let's not forget, "Happy birthday, Mr. President"

Now, that was obviously dubbed!