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Fort's Golden Throat: Was His Voice Recorded?

The earliest wave of personality-recordings came in the late 19th Century, before the cylinders were much good for music. They were not put on sale but some have survived, miraculously. Fort was still young and obscure at this period.

His death in 1932 came just before the period that radio stations began to transcribe their broadcasts for syndication. I have not heard of any broadcasts made by Fort, though he might well have seized the opportunity to plug his books, when he was, briefly, talked-about.

Home-recording disc-systems were available in the early thirties to a select market in the USA, so it is not impossible that Fort's voice could have been preserved, just unlikely. It was not until the availability of tape recording after WWII that amateur and semi-professional enthusiasts would enter the field.

We can live in hope but I think we would have heard by now . . . :)
 
I have mixed feelings about the possibility of hearing Fort's voice. If his voice is low-pitched, relaxed, friendly and authoritative, then great! If he is hesitant, high-pitched, and tense, then the Voice of Fort in my head is gone forever. I guess I prefer my illusions....
 
I imagine him sounding like Isaac Asimov, both brought up in New York, but without the really extreme accent.
 
Endlessly Amazed said:
I have mixed feelings about the possibility of hearing Fort's voice. If his voice is low-pitched, relaxed, friendly and authoritative, then great! If he is hesitant, high-pitched, and tense, then the Voice of Fort in my head is gone forever. I guess I prefer my illusions....
Click to expand...
A resonant, thoughtful Mark Twain type voice would be great... though it's equally possible he had a voice like the late, great Gilbert Gottfried or even Truman Capote.
 
According to IMDB, there are a number of people who were also born in Albany, New York, during the late 1800s who managed to make it into film or TV recordings for some reason or another.
So I expect we could approximate his linguistic skills, pronunciation, timbre and tone, from those that we DO have recordings of.
Such as General Leslie Groves, the director of The Manhattan Project.
Here he is in an episode of "We, the people".
 
The thread title conjures up some very unwelcome images in my degenerate mind.
 
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