The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I just watched "The Great Ziegfeld", the romanticized version of Florenz Ziegfeld's life, that MGM put out in 1936. Loved the movie, but I got to wondering. Are there any recordings of Anna Held? If not, why not? Was she not considered salable, or was she too notorious, or too expensive, or too exclusive? Anybody out there know?

According to "Popular American Recording Pioneers, 1895-1925" By Tim Gracyk & Frank W. Hoffmann (Page 19), Anna Held was one of many famous stage performers who never made commercial recordings:

http://books.google.com/books?id=HT9WMV ... gs&f=false

It's interesting to note that her relationship with Ziegfeld was greatly sanitized in the film -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027698/.

As a trivia note, Luise Rainer -- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0707023/ -- who won the academy award as best actress for her role in the film, is still alive, and at 101, is the oldest living recipient of the academy award.

Ortho_Fan wrote:As a trivia note, Luise Rainer -- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0707023/ -- who won the academy award as best actress for her role in the film, is still alive, and at 101, is the oldest living recipient of the academy award.

Yes, and she was interviewed recently by Robert Osborne on TCM; I saw it last week.

She might not have been the best singer. Some performers have strong personalities that can carry an audience even if their vocal qualities aren't impressive. Who knows? Quite a few luminaries made only one or two recordings despite being famous. Eva Tanguay made one (she sounds awful) Mitzi Hajos did two sides for Victor, as did Joseph Cawthorn (famous on stage and in films). Marie Dressler made a few cylinders, DeWitt Hopper made a couple of discs, George M. Cohan as well. All of them were celebrities, but not recording stars.

That would be DeWolfe Hopper, famous for his recitation of 'Casey At The Bat'. I have always been disappointed that Elbert Hubbard, the founder of the Roycroft arts & crafts colony, never made any recordings of which I'm aware.

Are you refering to the Tanguay recordings done for Nordskog?

That Tanguay record is the one I meant. I've only heard an audio file of one copy (is there more than one copy?)and it is painful to listen to. She might have had one of those voices which the acoustic system just couldn't reproduce well, and that company wasn't known for fidelity. Still, she lived until 1947 and it's strange that she wasn't captured on talking film- Hollywood trotted out scores of old time vaudevillians.