I suppose people might not recognize my voice if I were to post old airchecks from my time as a poor, struggling radio DJ. A similar phenomenon happened to me when I heard an old recording of my mother. She had recently graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, finishing when Grace Kelly was starting there.
When I first heard this record of my mother performing a test reading for a scene in a play, I honestly did not know it was her. Not until the other performer gave her name. Mom had obviously received training in voice acting for performing on radio. The guy had a distinctive Fred Allen style of speaking.
Mom gave up acting after marrying Dad. With six children, including two sets of fraternal twins, some people assumed we were Catholic, but we weren’t. My parents joined a support group called Parents of Large Families that was featured in Parade Magazine. The timing was as bad as could be, because we appeared in the Sunday, November 24, 1963 issue, two days after the assassination of JFK.
In the picture below that’s me with my hand over the tail light.
I’ve often wondered what the impact of that article would have been on the women’s movement if it had come out mere months later? Or a year later? Anyway, we had our 0.15 seconds of fame.