drednm

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/nova-pilbeam-alfred-hitchcocks-star-who-vanished-from-view-10402905.html The Hitchcock actress and 40s stars has died...... Superb in The Three Weird Sisters (1948).

The thread has several examples of dubbed actors.... that's so what. GOOD BYE

Wood is dubbed by Marni Nixon, Beymer is dubbed by Jimmy Bryant, Moreno is dubbed by Betty Wand in her big solo. I don't remember Chakiris singing at all. And yes Tamblyn croaks out a few notes.

And then there's Natalie Wood in blackface in West Side Story and dubbed by Marni Nixon. Was everyone dubbed in that one? Rita Moreno was.

my new article on Lake: http://fan.tcm.com/blogpost/veronica-lake-more-than-a-hair-do

Hepburn could have TALKED her songs a la Harrison. He couldn't croak a note. Once they had settled on the croaking Rex on stage on on the silver screen, they HAD to have a superlative singing voice for Liza.

I agree.... Gigi is another bloated snoozefest that I have never liked. And yet it won a trove of Oscars. Chevalier and Harrison are not favorites. In one of the Moss Hart biographies, there are many passages about Hart's directing the stage My Fair Lady and what an absolute horror Harrison was to work with. Harrison fought Hart every inch of the way and yet won a Tony and had the biggest success of his life because Hart forced out of him, the performance he knew the show needed.

I always thought My Fair Lady a dismal bore. As stated, the camera seems to be nailed to the floor. The only scene with any life in it is the Ascot race scene....

You probably typed **** instead of GOOCH See.....

I don't think the world needs a TRANNY MAME

I love the music for Mame. If this was being made into a feature film now, who would you cast as Mame, Vera, Gooch and Beau?

Wikipedia lists Mame as having a budget of $12 and grossing a hair over $6M.... Whether that includes international, it does not say.

Ball and Arthur each won Golden Globe nominations with Ball bizarrely losing to Raquel Welch for The Three Musketeers and Arthur losing to Karen Black for The Great Gatsby. Had Mame been a hit, Bea Arthur might have snagged an Oscar nomination.

It must have seemed like a plum for Preston, who I don't think had done a musical since The Music Man 12 years before. Although he was 7 years younger than Ball, he probably couldn't resist since he'd also get to sing the new song written for the movie. And the "weight" of the production was squarely on the star's shoulders, so regardless of reviews, most of the fallout was on Ball, while Preston, Beatrice Arthur, and Jane Connell flew pretty much under the radar.

Minnelli was way to young and ..... not a good enough actress to pull it off. It would have been Sally Bowles in a cloche hat. Shirley MacLaine maybe but not a good enough singer. Julie Andrews definitely if she could have done an American accent. Carol Burnett might have been a good choice, but not a big enough box-office draw.

Minnelli was way too young.....

Oscar nominee for The Devil's Holiday (1930).....

Here's the NY Times review for the 1983 revival: http://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/25/theater/stage-angela-lansbury-stars-in-mame-revival.html WITHERING

The musical Mame hasn't been on Broadway since the original show closed. Bette Midler has toyed with doing it but she's too old now. Christine Baranski toured several years ago with an eye toward Broadway but her reviews were hideous and the show closed "out of town," as they used to say. Even Bernadette Peters is too old now even though she looks about 40. Odd that even the play has never been revived on Broadway. As for remaking Auntie Mame as a film, they'd ruin it by "updating" the story, and the story wouldn't work in modern times. Even the musical version (at least in the film) updated the Connecticut school next to the Upsons from one for Jewish refugees to one for unwed mothers.... to no effect. The key to Mame's comic character is that we see her as a madcap, but she sees herself as a perfectly normal personal and not as an eccentric at all. That's why she's funny. If you play Mame as a clown, you lose the real humor and the warmth her character exudes.

Lucy has her moments in Mame. For me the worst part of the film is the way they butchered Jerry Herman's songs. Lyrics were changed for no reason at all. Several songs are truncated, probably to shorten the running time of the film. But then they added in a new song for Robert Preston (which is quite good). Beatrice Arthur holds her own in the cast, but Jane Connell as Gooch gets shunted into a decidedly supporting role. There's been word of a remake of Auntie Mame for the screen with Tilda Swinton in the starring role. Rosalind Russell was so totally perfect in the original, I can't imagine anyone else in the non-musical part.

Regarding the TCM article on Mame: http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article.html?isPreview=&id=1097064|1082426&name=Mame Rosalind Russell did NOT win the Tony for the play Auntie Mame. She was nominated. Russell did win the Tony for Wonderful Town.

It's funny how stars like Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable are usually thought of as 40s stars, as if their careers ended in 1950. Both ladies continued their film careers well into the 1950s and were still box-office draws. Grable was still in the top 10 lists up through 1953 with How to Marry a Millionaire while Hayworth gave one of her best performances in the 1959 film The Story on Page One when she was 40ish. Novak's career might have been entirely different if she had had one big hit in the early 60s.

You have to remember, she's in her 80s. I'm just really surprised at how good she really was in her 50s and 60s films. Several Oscar caliber performances, but Columbia probably didn't promote her enough as an actress.

I'm watching Middle of the Night right now and I think it agree. Novak and March are excellent in this drama. Funny how her career went bad so fast after the Columbia years. Although I like several of her 60s films, they apparently didn't do well at the box office, but I wonder if that's really true. I couldn't find actual numbers for those films.