Television: Offstage Voice

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 2,000 singing commercials. All day, every day, she warbles as the Schlitz Beer girl ("You'll be the kiss of the hops in every glass"), as the Scottissue girl, the Santa Fe Railroad's Indian boy ("Santa Fe, all the way"). 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.

Gloria gets paid every time a network commercial is repeated, makes almost $150,000 a year (equaling TV's Jack Paar), lives in Beverly Hills and drives a 1958 Lincoln Continental Mark III. 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 1,000,000 copies. The movies have called on her to provide the voice of many a nonsinging star. She sang for Marilyn Monroe in River of No Return, for Vera-Ellen in White Christmas.

Trying to escape her mink-lined fate as an offstage noise, Gloria has just recorded a new Columbia album, appeared last week on Art Linkletter's House Party, when she sang (through electronic ingenuity) all four parts of a quartet accompanying herself. "I like making money," she admits. "But I'd like to be known for all the things I've done. Nobody knows Gloria Wood."