While it is unbelievably cool to see and hear these film clips,
I'd like to jump in at Ilomay Bailey's defense.  In that clip she
isn't doing anything that singers of the time weren't also doing,
including Jeannette MacDonald and Deanna Durbin, and she has diction
to die for!

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nqtIXUhxSw


It was a style.  I like it much better than what passes for singing
these days.  :-p

Claudine Jones (mezzo, S.F. Conservatory of Music, Class of 1992)
San Francisco Bay Area