Julie Gibson

A one-time big band singer and aspiring actress, Julie Gibson went on to work as a press agent for Fox in Europe and a long career as a dialect coach for films and television during the 1960s and 1970s. Born Gladys Camille Sorey on September 9, 1913 in Lewiston, Idaho, she began performing locally in a duo with her sister, Rea, before performing on the club circuit in her own act, called Camille Sorey and Her Girlfriends. While in Salt Lake City, Utah, Gibson won a radio talent contest that earned her a two-week stint with bandleader Eddy Duchin at the Coconut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles, California. Soon after, her career took off in earnest after bandleader Jimmie Grier hired her to perform with his band at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles; that led to exposure via live radio broadcasts and numerous recordings on the Decca Records label, as well as her own live radio program for CBS. After divorcing Grier in 1940, Gibson signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures, and after providing the singing voice for actresses Eleanor Powell and Betty Hutton in various pictures, kicked off her own screen career with an uncredited appearance in a Deanna Durbin comedy, "Nice Girl?" in 1941. Though she would go on to appear in "The Feminine Touch" (1941), "Going My Way" (1944) and Preston Sturges's "Hail the Conquering Hero" (1944), her roles were minor and often uncredited, while more substantive work was relegated to shorts, including a pair of Three Stooges short comedies in 1942. Gibson eventually broke her contract with Paramount and headed for Paris, where she recorded dialogue for English-language dubs of international productions, hosted "Paris Cavalcade of Fashions" (1948), a weekly series of theatrical short subjects, and worked for 20th Century Fox as a press representative on John Huston's "Moulin Rouge" (1952) and the offbeat cult favorite "Beat the Devil" (1953). She returned briefly to Los Angeles and logged several appearances on episodic television series, but was soon back to Europe, where she recorded dialogue for English language dubs of Continental productions. She later worked as a dialect coach on features like Martin Ritt's "The Outrage" (1964) and series like "Family Affair" (CBS, 1966-1971), and married one of the show's regular directors, the prolific Charles Barton, in 1973. Gibson made her final screen appearance in the miniseries "The Awakening Land" (NBC, 1978); she died at her home in North Hollywood, California at the age of 106 on October 2, 2019.