During the germinal days of television, just by being herself, the actress Joyce Gordon made a gender stereotype anachronistic.
“I’m not a glamour girl — most women aren’t,” she volunteered in a 1961 interview. “I’m an attractive, up-to-date young woman — glasses and all.”
Confident and, clinically, farsighted, Ms. Gordon, who died at 90 on Feb. 28, became famous as “The Girl With the Glasses,” for un-self-consciously wearing her signature eyeglasses on camera as she delivered live, on-air advertising pitches for products like Crisco and Duncan Hines cake mixes.
For all the headlines that her eyewear inspired, though, Ms. Gordon was also known for her voice. She reached radio listeners and television viewers through commercials and promotional announcements. Moviegoers heard her in dubbed foreign films — as a stand-in, for example, for Claudia Cardinale in Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West,” released in the United States in 1969.
And, her agent said, she was the voice in the ubiquitous recording that advised telephone callers in the 1980s and ’90s that “the number you have reached is no longer in service.”
Her daughter, Melissa Grant, confirmed Ms. Gordon’s death, in Manhattan.
Ms. Gordon was credited with blazing other trails professionally. According to the Screen Actors Guild, she broke ground in 1966 as the first woman to head a local unit of the union when she was elected president of the New York branch in 1966. She was the first woman to serve as an announcer on a network TV broadcast of a national political convention, in 1980 on ABC, and the first to do on-air promotions for a network, plugging news and sports programs on NBC for four decades.
“Her stature as a pitchwoman and voice-over talent was indispensable in convincing the advertising industry to take seriously the concerns of commercial performers in the early days of that contract,” said Gabrielle Carteris, the president of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
Ms. Gordon pitched many household goods and personal products on television, but, as one interviewer wrote, she “has probably done more for the eyesight of the American woman than all the professionals and their lectures.”
Her glasses were not a prop.
She had been squinting into the camera while rehearsing a commercial when an advertising agency representative, observing her in the studio, suggested that she wear her glasses on air. He assured her that he would persuade the sponsor to agree to what would be a radical departure from convention.
“Gradually, I realized what he was driving at,” she recalled. “The glasses give me identity and authority.”
Moreover, she said, “people tend to feel that I’m natural.”
She went on to be profiled in Broadcasting magazine in 1960 under the headline “The TV Girl Who Wears Glasses.” TV Guide put her on the cover as the first woman to wear glasses while appearing under her own name as a “TV hostess.” (“I enjoy being myself instead of playing a part,” she was quoted as saying.)
Ms. Gordon said she had felt awkward on dinner dates because she had had trouble reading menus, but added: “Now I wear my glasses, and it doesn’t seem to make any difference to the fellows.”
Joyce Gordon was born on March 25, 1929, in Des Moines, Iowa, to Jule and Diana (Cohn) Gordon. Her father, a cosmetics and hair-care industry executive, founded the National Barber and Beauty Manufacturers Association.
Reared in Chicago, Ms. Gordon attended the University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin. She moved to New York City when she was 19, to pursue a career in entertainment. She landed parts on radio and live television programs, including “Studio One” and “Robert Montgomery Presents.” She began doing mostly commercials in the mid-1950s.
In addition to her decades of union involvement, she was also active in civic affairs in Westchester County, N.Y., where she lived, as a member of the White Plains City Council.
She was married to Bernard Grant, an actor who was a fixture on soap operas as Dr. Paul Fletcher in “The Guiding Light” and as Steve Burke in “One Life to Live.” He died in 2004. Besides her daughter, she is survived by her son, Mark Grant; her sister, Jill Gordon; and a grandson.
A boom in dubbing foreign-language films for English-speaking audiences revitalized Ms. Gordon’s career. She became the voice of Annie Girardot, Jeanne Moreau and other stars in movies by Ingmar Bergman, Jean Renoir and Luchino Visconti, filling a professional niche that requires an actress to give up her own persona.
“You have to try to crawl into the other actor’s body, to understand how a shrug, a raised eyebrow, a way of breathing can affect the performance,” Ms. Gordon told The New York Times in 1982.
Being cast as a disembodied voice onscreen seemed like a variation on the adage about being heard but not seen. After “Once Upon a Time in the West” was released, a reviewer credited Ms. Cardinale, who was born in Tunisia and spoke Italian with a pronounced French accent, for her command of English. Ms. Gordon was unfazed.
“It’s an anonymous kind of gratification,” she said.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
