Yesterday I watched a documentary on PBS about Sid Caesar on TV. Nanette Fabray appeared in one skit. I’ve wondered, sicne I saw her on the panel on Hollywood Squares, when she was deaf? Granted that actors like Marlee Matlin and Hank Patterson (Fred Ziffel on Green Acres), she was a talented enough performer that she may not have had to rely on heard cues to know when and how to speak and emote. But when was she deaf, and to what extent?
Legally deaf since the 1950s, but she STILL sings better than I.
Leslie Nielsen is also “legally” deaf due to a childhood illness with, IIRC, his time in the ball turret of a B-24 finishing off most of what was left.
Nanette Fabray suffered from a conductive hearing loss where the three bones in her middle ear gradually stopped vibrating to transmit sounds to her inner ear.
My mother had the same type of deafness. It’s difficult to say “how deaf” someone is with that problem, since they may her one frequency fairly well, but not another. Rather than absolute silence, my mother heard normal speech as a rather low-pitched, muffled pattern of noise.
Since this type of hearing loss usually comes on later in life, a person already has learned pronunciation and inflection, and most likely can gauge the relative volume of their speech. In the space of a couple of years, my mother got quite good at reading lips.
I’ve seen Nanette Fabray use sign langauge in performances.