Rediscovering Toy Gallagher

My grandmother, Toy Gallagher, is in the front middle dancing with Harold Lloyd, very famous comedic actor of the 20's and 30's. Life magazine called her Miss Vivacity! She was a Max Sennett bathing beauty and one of the celebrities who attended the Grand Opening of Grauman’s Chineese Theater in Hollywood. She wrote beautiful newspaper articles about her life as a Hollywood actress and I’m now turning her work into a musical film. Keep an eye out for “Toy” in the future!

Toy Gallagher is in this 1925 film The Freshman at about 45 minutes.

Jungle Juice

Stay Healthy Jungle Juice Recipe

1 tablespoon Braggs raw unfiltered organic apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon of manuka honey (add more to taste)
Room temperature water
Add a few ounces of apple juice if you’d like a little sweeter version

Fill it to the top of your glass or sport top water bottle
Stir it or shake well
Great to take with you to a voiceover, speaking or singing gig.
Helps with sore throat and phlegm issues.

Billboard Music Awards

I’ll be flying to Vegas in a couple of weeks to start rehearsals for the 2015Billboard Music Awards show! This’ll be my fourth time live announcing the show and I love it.
It holds a special place in my heart because the first year I did the show I was nauseous and exhausted. Why is that so great? Well, I was pregnant with our darling son and didn’t know it at the time.  It wasn’t until the end of the long weekend that I realized what might be going on.

As a working woman, especially in this line of work, you don’t often get to take a sick day and you have to get through as best you can because as they say “the show must go on”.
The only thing that seemed to help my nausea were lollipops. So all during rehearsals and the live show if I wasn’t saying, “ladies and gentlemen please welcome,” I was sucking on a lollipop.
The Jolly rancher green apple flavor seemed to work best. And bonus! The sour sweet combo is much like having a bite of a green apple before you do voiceover to reduce any mouth noise. It’s an old VO trick.  Some studios here in LA actually keep a bowl of green apples on hand just for this purpose.
So tune in on May 17 to watch the Billboard music awards! Will I be enjoying lollipops between Live announcements?? Hmmm.. You never know.

The 2015 Billboard Music Awards is a music award ceremony that will be held on May 17, 2015, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Paradise, Nevada. It will be aired live on ABC at 8:00/7:00 PMCentral.

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Here’s a link to Melissa’s interview after the 2015 Billboard Music Awards.

With Ryder at the 2012 Billboard Music Awards