By Paul Miller
Bollywood stars Sunny Deol and Amitabh Bachchan have both taken out insurance on their voices.
Deol covered his “skill of dialogue delivery” whilst Bachchan insured against the loss of his unique singing voice.
When Bing Crosby signed a contract with Paramount Pictures in 1933, his voice was insured at Lloyd’s for $100,000. Before the policy was agreed, however, underwriters insisted on a proviso. A medical had previously discovered a node on Bing’s vocal chords and underwriters told him he could not undergo surgery to remove it as it was the node that gave him his distinctive husky voice.
After insuring her throat for $50,000 in 1938, Mexican actress Dolores Del Rio appeared in an advertisement for cigarette brand Lucky Strike which read: “Her throat insured for $50,000. That $50,000 insurance is a studio precaution against my holding up a picture. So, I take no chances on an irritated throat. No matter how much I use my voice in acting, I always find Luckies gentle.”
Lester Tremayne was another actor who insured his voice. He once commented, “I’ve been in more than 30 motion pictures, but it’s from radio that most people remember me.” Whilst living in Chicago in the 30s, he decided to take out an unusual policy at Lloyd’s. He was originally from London and covered himself against the “loss of his voice, the change of its tone” and “distortion of his native accent by the dialects of the Mid-West”.
Because the voice of Laura La Plante proved outstanding in 1929’s Show Boat, Universal took out a policy insuring it against injury. If she suffered a total and permanent loss of ability to “talk as clearly and distinctly as now”, Universal would have received £40,000 to off-set expenditure on whatever picture she was making. Before Lloyd’s approved the policy, they insisted on a movie-tone test of her voice being made “In order to preserve the evidence of its present quality. In case of injury another test would show to what degree her voice had changed.”
Another Hollywood star of the time, Shirley Temple, was insured by her production company in 1934 when she was seven years old. She was told by underwriters that she “must not take up arms in war” and that the policy would be cancelled if she was “killed whilst drunk or intoxicated.”
Over the years, many other unusual stipulations have been added to policies. For example, pianist Hazel Scott was told that she could no longer wash dishes after insuring her hands for $1 million. Fellow pianist Joe Henderson also insured his hands at Lloyd’s in the 1950s. He was subsequently banned from performing handstands, duelling, steeplechasing, fighting, shaking hands with anybody who weighed over 15 stone or signing more than 500 autographs in a single day.
Pianist DeLloyd McKaye’s fingers were also insured at Lloyd’s for $50,000 in 1928. Her policy stated that she could not do her own housework. It also, rather strangely, dictated that she could not marry.
