Mary Garden - Recordings and Films

Recordings and Films

Mary Garden made about 40 gramophone records between 1903 and 1929 for G & T, Columbia and Victor. They continue to be reissued and are of much interest to connoisseurs of historical recordings—although Garden herself was said to have been generally disappointed with the results. Of special interest are the four 1904 Black G&T recordings she made accompanied by Claude Debussy in Paris. There are also a small number of recordings made from radio broadcasts.

She made two silent films, Thais (1917) and a World War I romance entitled The Splendid Sinner (1918). Without her singing voice, her acting was criticized and neither film was a success. In the 1930s, Garden appeared on Cecil B. DeMille's Lux Radio Theater. One such airing had Garden and Melvyn Douglas reading the play Tonight or Never which had recently been made into a motion picture.