CAN YOU HEAR THE ACTORS SING?
For studios, sometimes star power counts more than vocal ability
When Pierce Brosnan was foolhardy enough to warble some ABBA numbers in the first Mamma Mia film in 2008, the critics reached for their stilettos.
New York Magazine likened his singing voice to a “donkey braying.”
The alternative weekly Creative Loafing was even less flattering, accusing the former 007 of “choking out the lyrics as if he’s being subjected to a prostate exam ...”
One wouldn’t have blamed Brosnan had he steered clear of a sequel. Yet, brave guy that he is, he’s back in the current Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again — reprising the role of Sam, husband of Meryl Streep’s Donna and possible father to Amanda Seyfried’s Sophie. This time, however, he’s burdened with a lot less vocalizing. And he admitted to Britain’s Radio Times he’s “relieved — very relieved” that his musical obligations to the new film are limited.
Brosnan is perhaps the most notorious example of Hollywood’s peculiar readiness to assign roles in movie musicals to people who can’t sing. But shouldn’t filmgoers admit to a certain perverse pleasure in witnessing these onscreen train wrecks? And don’t many of us enjoy arguing about which qualify as the worst?
A few examples:
RUSSELL CROWE IN LES MISÉRABLES (2012)
The moody Australian may have seemed right for the role of the thuggish Inspector Javert, obsessive pursuer of Jean Valjean, but his perpetually miserable look in the film was likely more due to the fact that he had to sing. Or as a Guardian newspaper columnist recently commented: “Russell Crowe sounded like a man giving himself a hernia.”
EMMA WATSON IN BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (2017)
This Harry Potter graduate is a charming onscreen presence, except when she opens her mouth to sing.
What made her feeble vocalizing as Belle all the more painful is that we can easily compare it to Paige O’Hara’s stellar work as the voice of Belle in Disney’s earlier animated version.
MARLON BRANDO IN GUYS AND DOLLS (1955)
Brando plays gambler Sky Masterson with a certain jaunty panache in this film version of the hit Broadway musical, but his low-octane nasal rendition of a classic Frank Loesser song such as Luck Be A Lady left you cringing. But at least Brando seemed to be trying — unlike the experienced Frank Sinatra, who was a lazy and lacklustre presence as fellow gambler Nathan Detroit.
TOM CRUISE AND ALEC BALDWIN IN ROCK OF AGES (2012)
It’s hard to decide which is worse. Both Baldwin’s mangling of Can’t Fight This Feeling and Cruise’s bawling rendition of I Want To Know What Love Is are candidates for the memory book of musical awfulness.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR IN A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (1977)
When Taylor, anxious to revive a sagging career, went after the coveted role of Desiree in the film version of Stephen Sondheim’s award-winning Broadway musical, it was like taking a wrecking ball to a classic work. The film was a disaster, and Taylor’s amateurish rendition of Send In The Clowns — so bad it had to be pasted together from several different takes — is sufficient to explain why.
LEE MARVIN AND CLINT EASTWOOD IN PAINT YOUR WAGON (1969)
If this is the least-remembered major musical from the creators of My Fair Lady and Camelot, it’s likely due to the film version — a fiasco that may have done irreparable damage to the original’s reputation.
Who is worse — Marvin rasping out a guttural travesty of Wand’rin Star or Eastwood struggling futilely to stay on pitch with I Talk To The Trees? Take your pick. Why does the film industry do this? Well partly it’s the mystique of star power — so who cares if they can’t hold a tune as long as they sell tickets? Partly it’s due to the fact that the movie musical is now a rarity.
The days when Hollywood could draw on a bank of experienced specialty talent — capable of singing, dancing and acting — are long gone. Where are the contemporary equivalents of Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland? There aren’t any — with the occasional rare exception of people such as Hugh Jackman, who first made his name in musical theatre, or Meryl Streep, always ready to move confidently into a different genre. Occasionally, performers with little or no musical experience do surprise us: Richard Gere in Chicago (2002), although his song-and-dance routine was carefully edited. Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face (1957), although in the later My Fair Lady (1964) her singing had to be dubbed. Clark Gable, a breezy pleasure in his rendition of Putting on the Ritz in the 1939 film Idiot’s Delight. A very young Jimmy Stewart, strangling on his high notes but still getting by on sheer charm, when he sings Cole Porter’s Easy To Love in the 1936 Born To Dance.
On the other hand, Woody Allen deliberately courted disaster with his 1997 musical, Everyone Says I Love You, by deliberately casting people who couldn’t sing. Furthermore he didn’t warn them in advance.
“I wanted to make a musical where the guy and girl were not Jeannette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, where they didn’t sing with these glorious voices that are trained and perfect and often lacking in any feeling,” he said at the time.
“I don’t care if they’re good or on pitch … it doesn’t matter. I wanted to do a film with actors who would start singing as an extension of the acting the way that my mother and father might have done.”