drednm
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Posts posted by drednm
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The thread has several examples of dubbed actors.... that's so what.
GOOD BYE
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Don't understand the "blackface" comment. Rita Moreno sings in "America". Russ Tamblyn sings in "Officer Krupke" and group numbers. George Chakiris is not dubbed.
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.
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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.
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LornaHansonForbes--Thank You for posting the Audrey Hepburn "Show Me" video--Julie had the voice, but Audrey had the attack & comic timing--I thought the key of the song would have to be changed--Andrews sung version of MFL is timeless, but Audrey Hepburn's has the comic edge & the edge on the Cockney accent--IMHO.
Edit; Judging from the video, Hepburn had learned more than the rudiments of singing--she was able to hold a low soprano note for at least 3-4 beats three times during the song--it would have been a fascinating experiment to have Audrey use her own voice--& I think she had the box-office power to pull it off--but Warner went the safe route--still, it's something to wonder about.
Edit II--Just saw video of Audrey attempting "I Could Have Danced All Night"--key had Not been lowered for her: not good. Still, if songs had been lowered to her key, where she was comfortable--still Hepburn might have been able to pull it off--hmmmm.
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.
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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.
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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....
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You probably typed **** instead of GOOCH
See.....
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I don't think the world needs a TRANNY MAME
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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?
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Wikipedia lists Mame as having a budget of $12 and grossing a hair over $6M.... Whether that includes international, it does not say.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Minnelli was way too young.....
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Oscar nominee for The Devil's Holiday (1930).....
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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
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That's not true. Angela Lansbury starred in a revival of Mame on Broadway in the early 80s, but it didnt go over. I think it only played a couple months. Ticket sales were soft in Boston, so it moved to NY and moved up the opening date. I think it wound up opening in August which was really stupid. They should have booked a few more dates and opened in the fall. This was before she fell into the good fortune of Murder, She Wrote. I dont think its been revived since. It would be a very expensive show to produce, which would dissuade backers. I remember critics at the time complaining the revival was a word for word/directed revival and they should have done more with it. Whatever. It flopped.
Yes you're right. I wasn't counting that since it had so many of the people from the original show involved, but yes it was a full-fledged revival and FLOP. For some reason I thought it was a "concert" version.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
NOVA PILBEAM DEAD
in General Discussions
Posted
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).