Watch Lucille Ball demo a 1939 ancestor of the "talk box" famously used by Peter Frampton

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/08/watch-lucille-ball-demo-a-1939.html

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Also featured as a plot point in You’ll Find Out. I love that movie.

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Featured in ‘You’ll Find Out’ a fun old dark house film with Kay Kyser, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

ETA beat by @coherent_light but I got a youtube link…

ETAMORE how I found out about this gem…


Thank you Joe Dante.
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I sometimes forget YouTube exists.

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Songify, the early years.

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I’m pretty sure the voiceover was done by Mr Cholmondeley-Warner…

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I couldn’t quite work out what Lucille Ball was saying via the “talk box”; I think it might have been, “Your mother sucks cocks in Hell.”, but I might have been mistaken.

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I thought I heard “moo,” but the volume was low.

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Pretty sure it was, “Your Mother sews socks that smell!!!”

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So, there is an alternate universe where Lucille Ball was the voice of HAL9000.

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“Lucy, open the pod bay doors!”
“Waaah! I can’t do that, Ricky!”
“You got some splainin to do!”

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Surprisingly unimpressive, given that at the time, truly amazing speech synthesis was possible:

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Considering this news segment was all about sound, it was very pooly recorded.

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It was recorded in 1939… so it’s old and on the equipment of the day.

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They sent their interns to cover this.

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I think you’re missing my point?

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At 0:45 I love how one of the the Record Triumvirate disdainfully tosses away this apparent recording monstrosity.

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Being a heavy smoker may be a least partly to blame.

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You say that like it’s a bad thing…

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Not exactly. By 1939 Hollywood had the best sound recording and editing technology outside of Bell Labs. The people who shot this simply had no idea what they were doing. And the camerawork is lousy too.

Thus my comment that the sent the interns to cover this.

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