Musicals and Other Shows

[Daisy]

I enjoyed Emmerdale Farm as it was then called but dropped watching it many years ago - there just isn't enough time to follow many soaps and I did lose interest as it morphed into its present day format. Can you imagine a musical based on any of the modern soaps?
I hadn't known that Brigadoon was a musical - I saw the film when it first came out and liked it so much I sat through the show twice at the local cinema.

[Anita Bensoussane]

We watched the film, My Fair Lady, starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, the other day. Sheer magic. Quality acting and singing (even if Audrey's cockney accent was a bit questionable), and not a swear word to be heard.

Were you watching it on TV, Nigel, or on a DVD or similar? Sometimes films get edited slightly for TV, but the original does contain a few mild swear words.

It wasn't until I was an adult that I learnt that Audrey Hepburn's songs were dubbed in My Fair Lady, as were Mark Lester's in Oliver!

Every time I watch My Fair Lady, I long to have a study like Professor Higgins'. The wooden panels, curved staircase and ornate windows look fantastic - and then there's that glorious gallery of books up above.

I've never seen Brigadoon - I'll have to look out for it.

[TheOriginalFive]

My university class watched My Fair Lady for a unit on accents and pronunciations. I also have part of the script one of my literature professors collected, and the different British accents are obvious.

I thought the idea of passing Elizabeth off as a noblewoman by teaching her to talk like one was amusing, and also educational.

[Anita Bensoussane]

It is an intriguing idea. When George Bernard Shaw wrote the play Pygmalion which inspired My Fair Lady, he based Henry Higgins on well-known professors of phonetics like Henry Sweet and Alexander Melville Bell.

[Moonraker]

Were you watching it on TV, Nigel, or on a DVD or similar? Sometimes films get edited slightly for TV, but the original does contain a few mild swear words.

It wasn't until I was an adult that I learnt that Audrey Hepburn's songs were dubbed in My Fair Lady...

I wouldn't have noticed if they were mild, Anita. Yes, we did have the DVD. It was almost 3 hours long, complete with an Intermission! I noticed Audrey's songs were dubbed - and I also thought Harrison's were, too.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I'm pretty sure Rex Harrison sang his own songs but Audrey Hepburn's singing was mostly dubbed by Marni Nixon, except for a few bits and pieces here and there where her own voice was retained.

[Domino]

In the My Fair Lady film, Audrey Hepburn's songs were mostly dubbed by Marni Nixon (who also dubbed for Deborah Kerr in The King and I and Natalie Wood in West Side Story). Rex Harrison performed his own songs, though it might be said he was only talking in rhythm.

Dave

[Courtenay]

Rex Harrison performed his own songs, though it might be said he was only talking in rhythm.

Now there's something that's puzzled me for ages, since those songs (if you listen to the instrumentation) do have proper tunes, and yet Rex Harrison - both in the movie and in the original Broadway cast recording - barely sings a note of them. Did he do it that way because the producers decided that "talk-singing" suited the character of Higgins better, or because he (Harrison) wasn't a particularly good singer??

[Domino]

I think he always 'sang' like that, Courtenay. I don't know if you've ever seen the old 1940 film 'Night Train to Munich', in which he co-starred with Margaret Lockwood. He plays a Secret Service agent, whose cover is working as a seaside song-plugger selling sheet music. The song he plugs is like a fifth-rate pantomime sing-along song. He even has it written on a large pull-down sheet, as they do in pantomimes.
He also talks/sings in 'Doctor Doolittle'.

Dave

[Anita Bensoussane]

I was thinking of Doctor Dolittle too, Dave. When Rex Harrison does actually "sing" fragments of some songs, rather than "talking in rhythm", his voice doesn't sound very strong or rich. But "talking in rhythm" is something he does superbly and I think his cool, light, precise delivery suits an imperious and eccentric character like Professor Higgins perfectly.

[Stephen]

I'm not so well up on musicals as individual songs from musicals. I love songs like 'Love Changes Everything', 'There Ain't Nothing Like A Dame', 'Forty Second Street', 'One Night In Bangkok' and 'The Lambeth Walk', but I couldn't tell you where they fit into their respective stories. One musical in particularly I like a lot of songs from is 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat'.

The only musical I've seen on the West End stage is 'Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story' back in the early 90s. I thought it was very good, and I was incredibly impressed at one point which could have been a disaster when his electric guitar lead fell out in the middle of a song. As quick as a flash, a stage hand rushed over, plugged it in, rushed off again, and they carried on like nothing had happened. Very professional!

[Farwa]

I really enjoy watching musicals. I love "Sound of Music", "Singin' in the Rain"and other Gene Kelly movies, "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", and of course Disney films, which I consider musicals. There are many others, but the list would get too long if I mentioned them all!

[Fiona1986]

I love musicals and I'm surprised I haven't posted in this thread before! My favourites are The Sound of Music, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (I've watched these countless times since I was a child - first on videos recorded from TV and now on my own DVDS) Calamity Jane and Grease, but I have a lot more that I enjoy including Oklahoma (seen for the first time as an adult) Footloose, The King and I, Mary Poppins and many of the Disney Classics (pre 2000ish).

[Anita Bensoussane]

It's fun hearing about everyone's favourites. I ought to have remembered Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The King and I and Calamity Jane. I've never seen any of them on stage but I watched the films several times over when I was young and it's about time I watched them again! I'd also like to see Annie Get Your Gun, as I love the soundtrack.

I love musicals and I'm surprised I haven't posted in this thread before!

Abi only started the thread a couple of days ago but it has proved very popular!

[Fiona1986]

Whoops. There have been so many resurrected threads popping up lately I assumed this was another one I'd missed the first time around.

I've seen Seven Brides for Seven Brothers on stage, technically. Just a local theatre group doing it but it was great fun. The best part was one brother's axe head flying off and landing in the orchestra pit mid-routine, and the second best part was the "house" rolling a few feet back each time someone stepped quickly onto the porch.