Saturday, April 18, 2020

Some faces fit, some did not

Some of the really great voices in radio history just did not fit the screen (either TV or movie), at least not in the roles they played on radio. The most notable example was William Conrad, who was short and fat, and just could not make the transition from the radio Matt Dillon to the television Gunsmoke series, giving way to James Arness. However, Conrad's deep, resonant voice certainly fit the bill for gangsters and toughs, and he played several of those parts on the screen.

Another miscast voice was Bob Bailey, who, as my younger son put it, had "a face made for radio." The sad fact of the matter is that, although tall, he just was not very handsome, and so he never quite made it in movies.

One great radio voice that did make it in movies in a minor way was Gerald Mohr, who gained fame as detective Philip Marlowe on radio. Possessed of a dark sort of good looks, he parlayed them and his memorable voice into three of the Lone Wolf movie series.

Some great voices were never meant for the screen, and some were. Just a hard fact of life. On the other hand, there were those cases that were on the flip side. Jean Arthur's twangy voice did not switch particularly well to the screen, but she was such a good actress and was so cute that she made it to the big time, anyway.

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