Future Favorites — Bill Brady (1937) 🇺🇸

February 08, 2022

It is quite usual for a boy’s voice to dive from choir soprano to basso profundo at a certain tender age... It is almost unheard of for a full-grown man’s voice to change from a lusty baritone to a lyric tenor...

by Lee Blackstock

When Bill Brady was a freshman in George Washington University he won a Bing Crosby, contest... singing with the same gravel-and-groan qualities that the King of Crooners baritones...

But when you see this same Bill Brady crooning love ditties to pretty Harriet Hilliard in RKO-Radio’s musical, New Faces of 1937, you will hear emitting from his thrush-like throat, dulcet lyric tenor notes...

When Bill showed up at the studio for an audition, his manager told RICO musical critics... “My client can sing for you in either baritone or tenor range... which will you have?”... We’ll have both,” said the critics, “and then decide.”... So Brady sang in both registers ... and the critics decided he should be a tenor. So a tenor he is... and according to Bill... a tenor he will remain... leaving the heavier and fuzzier notes to Messrs Crosby, Eddy, Crooks, etc...

Brady can hardly believe he is in Hollywood facing bright promise of stardom... Only a year ago he was a George Washington freshman ... studying to be a journalist...

One day Bill remarked to his mother that his best friend had entered a singing contest... Mrs. Brady told Bill he had a better voice than his friend... and persuaded him to enter the contest... Bill imitated the popular Crosby so well, he won the contest...

That summer he accepted a singing job... in a little club in Reading, Pa... He and some friends took a jaunt to Atlantic City during the summer ... and he was requested to sing a number ... two Broadway producers heard him... asked him to come to New York...

There followed a series of stage and night-club engagements including George White’s Scandals... The Paradise Cafe... The Versailles... and The House of Morgan... Then Brady’s manager signed a motion picture contract for him...

Brady is 23 years old... has dark, wavy hair and blue eyes... He is so fond of music that he has a radio in every room in his house and one in his automobile... He plays golf for exercise and shoots in the low 80s...

He is definitely sold on Hollywood and plans to make his permanent home in the film capital.

DID YOU KNOW THAT even automobiles require make-up for movie scenes to eliminate the glare?

CollectionMotion Picture MagazineSeptember 1937

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