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Post by I Love Melvin on Mar 30, 2024 13:28:08 GMT
Happy Easter.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Apr 2, 2024 23:37:28 GMT
Gene Kelly made a late career appearance in Jacques Demy's French musical film Les Demoiselles de Rochefort ( The Young Girls of Rochefort) (1967). Interestingly but oddly, even though Kelly had sung throughout his Hollywood film career and actually spoke French, his and most other vocals were dubbed, Gene's by Donald Burke. As an aside to discussion of the film on wiki, there's this kind of gossipy quote from Michel Legrand: "{Kelly} had a short tessitura, only one octave. In Hollywood, where I often worked with him, he recorded with two other singers, one on his left for the low notes and one on his right for the high notes." Good information, I guess, but I'm not sure it needed to be said in that context. There's certainly no reason why they couldn't have used Kelly's own voice as far as I can see. NOTE: YouTube won't allow the video to embed, so you'll have to click the link. I'm never one to pass up an opportunity to watch Gene Kelly, but Xanadu (1980) was a good test of that commitment. He took the role seriously because he was a pro, but from a more modern perspective (and even at the time) it's hard to take the film as a whole all that seriously. Regardless, it's nice to have this final look at him in a musical role. Realistically, he was just never going to fit into the visual and musical aesthetic of the 1980's.
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Post by Fading Fast on Apr 3, 2024 8:32:21 GMT
Gene Kelly made a late career appearance in Jacques Demy's French musical film Les Demoiselles de Rochefort ( The Young Girls of Rochefort) (1967). Interestingly but oddly, even though Kelly had sung throughout his Hollywood film career and actually spoke French, his and most other vocals were dubbed, Gene's by Donald Burke. As an aside to discussion of the film on wiki, there's this kind of gossipy quote from Michel Legrand: "{Kelly} had a short tessitura, only one octave. In Hollywood, where I often worked with him, he recorded with two other singers, one on his left for the low notes and one on his right for the high notes." Good information, I guess, but I'm not sure it needed to be said in that context. There's certainly no reason why they couldn't have used Kelly's own voice as far as I can see. NOTE: YouTube won't allow the video to embed, so you'll have to click the link. I'm never one to pass up an opportunity to watch Gene Kelly, but Xanadu (1980) was a good test of that commitment. He took the role seriously because he was a pro, but from a more modern perspective (and even at the time) it's hard to take the film as a whole all that seriously. Regardless, it's nice to have this final look at him in a musical role. Realistically, he was just never going to fit into the visual and musical aesthetic of the 1980's. I was a teenager when Xanadu came out and your comments are spot on. I knew Kelly from all the old movies I watched on late night and Sat/Sun afternoon on local stations, but he just wasn't going to be a fit for a 1980s "disco-ish" movie. You are spot on, too, he's a pro, so he gave a professional performance in a movie I'd bet he was thinking "what the heck is this all about?" I was the right age to "get" Xanadu" and I never knew what the heck it was all about.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Apr 3, 2024 13:17:40 GMT
While I'm at it, I'm going to stay in the 1980's and get it out of my system. I guess we have to give producer Alan Carr credit for trying to keep the screen musical alive when the genre was being treated more and more like an artifact of the past, but good taste should still count, right? Grease (1978) had been a massive hit and rightly so, but that at least had been based on a book musical, whereas most of what followed was unfocused and massively over-produced. Can't Stop the Music (1980) is pretty much a cult movie today because there isn't any other way to view it, other than as "camp", without your head exploding. I have to admit that there's a certain kind of giddy fun to watching something this ridiculous, but small doses, please. Ready to "Do the Milkshake"?
And here's David Hodo, the "construction worker", claiming to be inspired by MGM musicals. Not sure I buy that, David, and I doubt Arthur Freed would either. Personally, this seems less like an upgrade of MGM musicals and more like a teardown. Not everything out of Hollywood's "Golden Age" was perfection either and I'm sure we could find something this facile and lame from that era as well, but don't invoke MGM when you're giving us something this derivative and uninspired.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Apr 6, 2024 23:14:29 GMT
I've only seen iffy public domain prints over the years of the British Vera-Ellen musical Happy Go Lovely (1951) and it doesn't seem to show up on TCM (or did I miss it?) so I was happy to find a good print has surfaced on YouTube. Someone has excerpted her big numbers, also in a decent print, so I'm passing them along. As in her Hollywood movies, her singing voice was dubbed, in this case by Eve Boswell. The big number, "London Town", comes in just after the 4:20 mark. Her costars were David Niven and Caesar Romero, neither of whom participated in the musical numbers, but it's a fun movie for anyone interested in searching it out.
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Post by I Love Melvin, un-logged in. on Apr 10, 2024 14:20:04 GMT
I spend time looking for the best prints of numbers I want to post, or sometimes even shabbier ones if that's all that's available, so I see a lot of what's out there and all too often dubbed performances are still credited to the star, with the comment section filled with praise for the star's vocal ability. Ava Gardner, for example. That's Entertianment III (1994) showed us clips of Ava's actual prerecorded vocals for Showboat (1951) intercut with the ones by Annette Warren which were eventually used, so we know Ava had a lovely voice. But for whatever reasons, studios were quick to take the safer route and plug in a professional. In Ava's case, that was often Eileen Wilson. There's an interesting interview, and I wish I could credit the interviewer (It sounds like it could be Mark Milano of Lost Vocals in an earlier incarnation), on You Tube which tells a lot of that story, so I want to pass it along. I love how little of her dubbing work she seems to actually remember because she did so much of it and wasn't always informed exactly how her vocals would be used. It's also interesting that she did some work for movie soundtrack albums, for which the record label was in some cases contractually unable to use the vocal as it appeared in the movie, for instance Jane Russell's vocal on a Marilyn tribute album for numbers from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1952). I have that album and never would have known it wasn't Jane if I hadn't been told. These women (mostly) deserve a lot of credit for their adaptive ability and for having to forswear the fruits of their labors.
The big name in dubbing which many people know is Marni Nixon. In a profile on CBS Sunday Morning she told some of her story, including how she was contractually forbidden to say what she'd done. Deborah Kerr eventually mentioned her name and that sparked public interest, so the secret was out.
Earlier I posted a collage of performances dubbed by Martha Mears put together by Mark Milano for his Lost Vocals YouTube channel. Here's some more of his remarkable sleuthing. It's interesting to note that Rita Moreno was dubbed in West Side Story (1960), for which she won the Academy Award, ostensibly for her whole performance. I'm not claiming foul, because I like the performance very much, only pointing out the lack of credit these professional dubbers had to endure, even when they contributed to award-winning performances.
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Post by I Love Melvin, unlogged in. on Apr 10, 2024 14:50:27 GMT
Earlier I posted a collage of performances dubbed by Martha Mears put together by Mark Milano for his Lost Vocals YouTube channel. Here's some more of his remarkable sleuthing. It's interesting to note that Rita Moreno was dubbed in West Side Story (1960), for which she won the Academy Award, ostensibly for her whole performance. I'm not claiming foul, because I like the performance very much, only pointing out the lack of credit these professional dubbers had to endure, even when they contributed to award-winning performances. In the case of Rita Moreno, of course, only key notes were dubbed, made necessary by the complex musical score. I didn't mean to slight Rita, who is a gifted musical performer.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Apr 19, 2024 12:59:24 GMT
I can't let Marlon Brando's Star of the Month tenure on TCM go by without a salute for his work in Guys and Dolls (1955), which was just shown. He took some heat then and now because he's nowhere close to a trained vocalist, but I think he did a very respectable job in both the acting and singing departments. Ben mentioned that his vocal performance had to be pieced together from different takes, but that wasn't uncommon enough in musicals that it should be considered a negative in this case. More power to him for wanting the role in the first place and for giving it his personal polish. Ben also mentioned the fact that this sparked bad feelings with Frank Sinatra, who wanted the role of Sky but grudgingly accepted the role of Nathan Detroit. Personally, I'm glad it worked out the way it did; Sinatra was a better fit for that role and a better match for Vivian Blaine than he would have been for Jean Simmons. And, speaking of Jean Simmons...Wow! I can't think of another role where she was called upon to be a principal singer again, which seems odd to me because hers was such a pleasant voice. This is their first number together, "I'll Know", only one of the hits to come out of this show. It's a serious ballad, but with enough clever romantic verbal byplay to make it a real charmer.
And this is Jean's big tour-de-force, "If I Were a Bell". Her character of the Salvation Army worker has been loosened up a bit by rum and she really lets herself go. And Brando does a great job of letting her have her moment but being in the moment with her.
Forgive me if I'm going on too much, but I was really enchanted seeing the film again after a number of years and there's so much good music. I've posted a couple of Vivian Blaine's numbers (except for "Adelaide's Lament", which I should come back to at some point) and the title number with Frank and Stubby Kaye, so right now I just want to focus on the romantic couple. Here's Jean and Marlon, just back from their night in Havana. "A Woman in Love", which was written for the movie.
I don't generally do this, but I'm going to toss in this promotional piece in which Brando and Simmons discuss their experience and Frank Loesser offers his opinion of their musical and dramatic performances. That part comes in at 1:50.
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Post by Fading Fast on Apr 19, 2024 13:33:50 GMT
"I can name better than you can the things he won't be..."
Great line, perfectly delivered.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Apr 19, 2024 17:25:26 GMT
What the heck. Why wait? I'm going to throw in Vivian Blaine's "Adelaide's Lament" while we're on the subject. As a characterization I think her Adelaide ranks up there with Judy Holliday's Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday (1950), which won Holliday an Oscar, and when you add to that her musical talent, you're got a winner. She'd generally played smart, sensible women in 1940"s Fox musicals like State Fair (1945); Adelaide is smart and sensible too, in her own way, but the characterization is miles away from what audiences would have expected. As I've mentioned previously, she began as a band singer in New York, did a string of musicals in Hollywood, but then voluntarily transitioned back to the New York club scene and it was there she was tapped to do Adelaide in the original Broadway company. So doing the role onscreen was a real full-circle moment for her.
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Apr 19, 2024 18:38:19 GMT
Does anyone recall Ben's closing comments after Guys and Dolls. I saw the intro but only watched the first half of the film.
In Ben's intro he appeared to imply Sinatra was fine with Brando getting the role and top billing in this musical even with his limited musical talent, but he would explain more about that after the film. Of course, maybe Ben was just joking since what I found on Wiki indicates Frank wasn't happy about Brando getting the part:
"Frank Sinatra had coveted the role of Sky Masterson and his relations with Brando were strained. Hollywood critic James Bacon quotes Sinatra telling director Joe Mankiewicz, "When Mumbles is through rehearsing, I'll come out." Sinatra had been considered for the role of Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront; both roles went to Brando".
As for the film: Decades ago, when I first found out about this film, I really wondered about the casting of Brando and Simmons since both where not known for their roles in musicals. Simmons is great, but I still find Brando to only be OK. (and since Gene Kelly was the first choice for the movie, this is a case where an actor was chosen mostly due to their box-office potential). I know that Robert Alda had the role in the Broadway play, but I can see why a studio wouldn't make him the lead of such a production, but Kelly still had major musical box office appeal.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Apr 19, 2024 23:24:41 GMT
Does anyone recall Ben's closing comments after Guys and Dolls. I saw the intro but only watched the first half of the film. In Ben's intro he appeared to imply Sinatra was fine with Brando getting the role and top billing in this musical even with his limited musical talent, but he would explain more about that after the film. Of course, maybe Ben was just joking since what I found on Wiki indicates Frank wasn't happy about Brando getting the part: "Frank Sinatra had coveted the role of Sky Masterson and his relations with Brando were strained. Hollywood critic James Bacon quotes Sinatra telling director Joe Mankiewicz, "When Mumbles is through rehearsing, I'll come out." Sinatra had been considered for the role of Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront; both roles went to Brando". As for the film: Decades ago, when I first found out about this film, I really wondered about the casting of Brando and Simmons since both where not known for their roles in musicals. Simmons is great, but I still find Brando to only be OK. (and since Gene Kelly was the first choice for the movie, this is a case where an actor was chosen mostly due to their box-office potential). I know that Robert Alda had the role in the Broadway play, but I can see why a studio wouldn't make him the lead of such a production, but Kelly still had major musical box office appeal. Ben was joking, but I'm glad you posted the Wiki entry, because it's practically word for word what Ben said in the outro, in which he used the "Mumbles" quote and also described the On the Waterfront situation in just about those same words. Sounds like Ben beat you to Wiki, james. You're not alone in your opinion of Brando in the role, but I was very impressed. The romance with Simmons really worked for me, in part because of how he shared the screen. He was a much bigger star than Jean but I think he must have sensed something kindred in her because the back-and-forth felt delicate and genuine. They'd also worked together the previous year in the drama Desiree (1954), so there was that extra level of familiarity. In the Ed Sullivan clip above Frank Loesser told how Goldwyn had wanted the drama to have precedence and had insisted on using dramatic stars rather than musical stars in a dramatic form rather than the typical musical comedy form and that he, Loesser, was gratified, as a composer, to have "articulate, believable performances" of his work. If that was the goal, I think Brando was a solid choice.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Apr 23, 2024 15:07:40 GMT
Walt Disney had paved the way with his Silly Symphonies in the 1930's, but the payoff was in his animated feature, Fantasia (1940), which was an extraordinary blending of music and animation. It apparently wasn't the sensation Disney had hoped for, but history has been very kind to this early work. The animation is so extraordinarily complex that even in this era of CGI it's still compelling.
It apparently caught the public by surprise and confused some of the audience expecting conventional narrative; its initial road show run was profitable, but the War in Europe cut off a huge revenue stream. Also, it was released in an enhanced "Fantasound" process which required some theater conversion, limiting the number of movie houses in which it could play. Then there was a severely re-edited mono rerelease in 1942 which finally brought it to neighborhood theaters. In 1946 much of the deleted footage was restored for another release, which would finally play overseas. Not included in any release was Debussy's Clair de Lune, which had been cut from the original program due to questions about the concept art and left in limbo until footage was salvaged and used for the animated "Blue Bayou" sequence in the feature Make Mine Music (1946). A completed version accompanied by Debussy's music was finally made public by Disney in 1996. I'm going to include both but if you just want to watch one I recommend the restored Debussy sequence. Beautiful music, beautiful images.
The fully restored original concept with Debussy's Clair de Lune.
Disney returned to the idea of animation to music with Fantasia 2000. It's enjoyable enough, but it seems to be geared toward a generation which was raised on the kind of much-less-precise animation seen on television and was willing to accept that as the standard. I applaud the effort and the fact that Disney was still willing to back the concept, but I'll probably go back to the original more than to the sequel.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Apr 29, 2024 12:48:30 GMT
Sticking with Disney, nearly all of his animated features yielded popular songs which became hits with the public and an enduring part of Disney's legacy. "When You Wish Upon a Star" sung by Cliff Edwards was probably the big hit which came out of Pinocchio (1940), but the number I enjoyed most was this imaginative puppet production number which was meant to showcase Pinocchio's lack of strings. Pinocchio was voiced by a twelve year old actor, Dickie Jones, and here he is singing "I've Got No Strings on Me".
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Post by I Love Melvin on Apr 29, 2024 23:24:48 GMT
Staying in Pinocchio's lane, bring on the puppets! I haven't posted a lot of Elvis, but I should rectify that because there's a lot I like sprinkled in among the dreck, like this one from G.I. Blues (1960). "Wooden Heart". A very loose-limbed Danny Kaye played a puppet in On the Riviera (1951). The musical numbers, some of which were posted before, were choreographed by Jack Cole, which accounted for the presence of Gwen Verdon in the movie and I'm 99 & 44/100 % sure that's Gwen as one of the girl puppets; even under the clown makeup you can make out her face. It's a little cutesy at times, but it's cleverly staged. "Popo the Puppet". That staging may have influenced the musical Chicago (2002) for the "They Both Reached for the Gun" number featuring Richard Gere and Rene Zellweger, which defied the "no musicals" curse to win Best Picture.
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