Monday, December 19, 2016

SINGER SPOTLIGHT: GLORIA WOOD


Gloria Wood was born on September 8, 1923 in Medford, Massachusetts, USA into a musical family. Her father was Robert E. Wood, a Boston radio singer in the 1920's, who with wife Gertrude Anderson-Wood, were the influence which pushed Gloria into singing, straight out of high school in 1941. Gloria's sister, Donna Wood, who sang with both The Horace Heidt Orchestra and The Kay Kyser Orchestra, sadly passed away in 1947 of a heart ailment at just 29 years old.

In 1958 Time Magazine wrote: The most pervasive voice in radio or television belongs neither to Bing Crosby nor Perry Como, but to a pretty, twinkly, auburn-haired girl named Gloria Wood. Blessed with a four-octave range and a gift for mimicry, Gloria can sing high or low, squeaky or sweet, on demand and to order. And the demand for such special talents is tremendous. In just the past three years, Gloria has recorded for more than 2000 singing commercials.

She is the voice of the impish Tinker Bell orbiting around a jar of Peter Pan peanut butter, of Walt Disney's Minnie Mouse, and (on records) of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. One firm planned a commercial featuring an eight-year-old boy, a nine-year-old girl, their mother and grandmother. Gloria did all four characters.

With her four-octave range, which she claims matches the eerie range of Peruvian Vocal Acrobat Yma Sumac, she can take off from low C below middle C and soar to C above high C. But this endowment also drives Gloria to despair: nobody wants to hear her sing straight. Her mother, a pop singer on Boston radio back in the mid-'20s thrust Gloria into big-band singing straight out of high school in 1941.

Gloria did solid hitches with Horace Heidt and Kay Kyser, in 1953 made a Capitol record called "Hey Bellboy" (its only words), which sold nearly 1000000 copies. The movies have called on her to provide the voice of many a non-singing star. She sang for Marilyn Monroe in "River of No Return", for Vera-Ellen in "White Christmas" "I like making money", she admits. "But I'd like to beknown for all the things I've done. Nobody knows Gloria Wood."


Wood had other solo tracks on Capitol and did a number of sides for other smaller labels such as Mastertone, Coral and Zephyr.In the mid 1950's she did an entire LP of romantic ballads for Columbia. In the late 1950s did a record with Rick Nelson and also headed up a choir featured on a Disney record and was a character voice in a number of advertisements (along with Stan Freberg), and in cartoons and on record albums.

Gloria passed away on March 4, 1995 in Los Angeles, California from complications of Diabetes. At that time, she was known as Gloria Wood-McGeorge. No mention of her career as a vocalist is made on her headstone, it simply says Beloved Wife...



8 comments:

  1. I am currently 87 born in 1931. Have heard Gloria Wood all my life and just saw a movie that she did some singing. Since I was a teenager I was always highly impressed with her singing and watching that move brought back lovely memories of her. The move was Sex and The Single Girl Natalie Wood & Tony Curtis.

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    1. I first met Gloria and Donna Wood March 6, 1996! An older man called my job at The Hollywood Reporter and said he had a great story about his wife GLORIA WOOD and her sister DONNA WOOD and had stuff at his house to prove it. So I went there with my then boyfriend and he gave us about 20 boxes of everything Gloria and Donna Wood! I still have a lot of the stuff. I gave some of it to the Broadcast Museum in NYC because of the recordings and photos and that they were so rare. Also, gave away a lot of it as gifts back to the Wood family. I knew Virginia Wood and we had a phone and pen pal relationship from 1996 all the way to 2011 when she passed. I never really met either sister, or Virginia in the flesh, but they left a lasting impression on me. You should read my book about them Robert. It's called WHERE THE WOODS WERE...

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  2. You put the wrong photo of Gloria Wood in the capsule of the article. Please note that you are looking at GLORIA STEVENS who would sometimes get mistaken for Gloria Wood. Please replace it with a real photo of Gloria Wood, not Gloria Stevens. I also wrote a nice book about Gloria and her sister Donna Wood, also a big band singer of the Forties who died mysteriously, killed by her pharmacist !!!! Just google WHERE THE WOODS WERE and it will be there. Thanks and change that photo.

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    1. Thanks, I corrected the pic. I would love to hear more of your relationship with them!

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  3. Honestly I never knew them in life. I just knew Gloria's husband Lee McGeorge who gave me all this memorabilia from her and her sister Donna. Right now I'm doing a series of podcasts of the book that I wrote about them WHERE THE WOODS WERE... It is a time travel, historical, big band, real life people type of novel and everything in it is true ... the people are real and they really existed and I'm interviewing the real people in the present that remember how I was into Donna & Gloria Wood and I also wanted to say that they are with me always, like angels and I've brought them back and I've even written an extra chapter about Josh White who was the father of folk music and I'm working with his grandson Josh White III... Thank you I hope everything's good and I think you did change the picture I have better pictures you could use but that's fine and have a good day thank you.

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    1. Where can I get the book? If you have another picture, feel free to send it and I will change the article. My email is davidlobosco@yahoo.com. I would love to do a story on your book as well.

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  4. David Lobosco here's the link where you can get a book on them called where the woods were written by me...
    http://www.lulu.cim/Spotlight/LeslieSiegelNovels

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  5. Hi David,

    Gloria was my Dad's cousin. His mom, my grandmother was one of 9 "Wood -pile", as we're known, kids. Robert and my grandmother were brother and sister. A friend of mine, Aaron Mintz, wrote the definitive article about Gloria, for Dicoveries magazine ... I'm trying to find a PDF reprint of it. I was lucky enough to talk to her on the phone with Aaron (back in '91). She and Donna are certainly the pride of the family.Aaron's article was titled "Woman of 1,000 voices". Jay Deane

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