When watching this I cannot help but notice how poorly misscast Shirley Mcclaine is as the lead. First of all the fact they had to dub over her voice, just makes it so inconsistent. The role was originated by Gwen Verdon on Broadway and would have brought so much more to the film. Fosse is still the man and the "Big Spender" sequence is first hand proof of his brilliance.
shareI don't understand what you mean by dubbing over her voice.
shareIt's her voice done in a studio then transferred back to where she is either mouthing or singing the words. But the transfer does not hold up because it sounds so unrealistic from where she is on location.
shareThat's how musical movies are made (with very few exceptions). The score is recorded in a studio and the cast lip-synchs to a playback. Do you think "Don't Rain on My Parade" in Funny Girl sounds like Barbra Stresiand is really on a tugboat? If your problem is how unpersuasive the sound is, that's not MacLaine's fault, that's a problem with the sound engineering or editing or even direction.
"What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?"
DryToast said That's how musical movies are made (with very few exceptions). The score is recorded in a studio and the cast lip-synchs to a playback. Do you think "Don't Rain on My Parade" in Funny Girl sounds like Barbra Stresiand is really on a tugboat? If your problem is how unpersuasive the sound is, that's not MacLaine's fault, that's a problem with the sound engineering or editing or even direction.
This is exactly what i getting at in my post. What the first poster fails to see is that if "gwen verdon" had played the part she would still have been pre-recorded. So she would still have been minming.
I know exactly how it works and I know Verdon would have had the same treatment, but I wish the casting of a Night club dancer would have gone to a more believable and convincing Fosse-like dancer/actor. He had been working with Verdon for years and had great chemistry on stage. She would have been far more believable in that role and could have portrayed Charity with more sexual despair, which the role required if you have ever read the play.
shareI have seen it on stage a few times. It is a lot lighter on stage. Particulaly the end. I think this is why they cast the way they did.
shareI don't think that SMacL's casting is bad based on the way they probably wanted the movie character to play back then: poor little helpless girl looking for someone to save her and take care of her. In this day and age, it sticks in the craw a bit, but back then, it went down much easier. Verdon probably had less of vulnerable quality and more edge than they wanted for a film version. Plus, BOX OFFICE: GV was a Broadway star, but unknown to the moviegoing public.
shareThe main reason Shirley MacLaine was cast was that she was a bigger star at the time who can also sing and dance. Just like Catherine Zeta-Jones was a bigger star than Bebe Neuwirth.
shareUniversal wasn't going to sink millions of dollars into a Gwen Verdon film. The fools.
shareAfter the film sale of SWEET CHARITY went through, one of the Hollywood trades reported that Universal was considering pairing Gwen Verdon with Jack Lemmon (as Oscar) in order to insure box office & retain Broadway's original Charity. Too bad it never happened.
However, if the role HAD to go to a Hollywood star with a box office record, they could have done much worse than Shirley MacLaine. She couldn't dance as well as Verdon - in fact, she couldn't even sing as well as Verdon - but at least she knew how to play the part. And thanks to her background as a dancer (and Verdon's intensive coaching), she came off rather well. But it's a good thing she was wearing a red dress in "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This" - otherwise, she would have been invisible next to Chita Rivera and Paula Kelly. Damn, those ladies can dance!
Thanks for mentioning MacLaine's background as a dancer - people here don't seem to realize that she got her start in musicals (Rodgers and Hammerstein's ME AND JULIET, and THE PAJAMA GAME, which really launched her career when she went on for Carol Haney) - she had previously appeared in the film version of CAN-CAN (whcih Verdon had done on Broadway) and also had several successful musical TV specials as well as a very successful musical act which she performed on Broadway and on tour.
Gwen Verdon, of course was a dynamic and unique performer, for whom SWEET CHARITY was conceived, written, and choreographed. But her film career had been somewhat limited (thank goodness she did the film of DAMN YANKEES!) - when she finally did gain some recognition in films late in her career, it was as a comic actress rather than a musical one.
SWEET CHARITY has managed to survive without Verdon, though it took a while for it to do so. At least two shows seemed so dependent on her presence in them that they seem never to be revived: REDHEAD and NEW GIRL IN TOWN (she won Tonys for both).
"I don't use a pen: I write with a goose quill dipped in venom!"---W. Lydecker
Damn....wish they had cast Gwen as Charity. Just finished watching the mini series "Fosse/Verdon" and I'm on a Fosse/Verdon "kick". That is why I'm here...... late to the party.
I always appreciated Gwen Verdon's talent and love her dancing. After watching YouTube videos of Gwen's dancing in "If They Could See Me Know" and "I'm a Brass Band", Shirley could not hold a candle to Verdon's extraordinary dancing. She was the best Fosse dancer there was and was mentored by the master himself for years. Charity was always Verdon's role and I don't know why Fosse allowed the producers to get their way by casting a Hollywood name.
Gwen Verdon was officially 44 years old when the film came out, a bit old for the role. That'd be a bit old for a sex worker in any decade, but more so in the 1960s, when everything was about the "youthquake" and nobody trusted anyone over thirty. That doesn't mean I think MacLaine was well cast, I don't. She wasn't much of a singer or dancer, and she didn't have a lot of vulnerability in her persona or personality. She always played the smart cookie who stood up for herself, and was a tall strong woman physically too. Even if she played the role as a bit dim, she just didn't seem as vulnerable as the character should have been.
You know who I'd have cast?
You'll never guess!
Twiggy!!
No, really, the model. Who later turned actress.
She was pretty and fragile physically, and two years later she'd make the lovely film "The Boy Friend" with Ken Russell, and produce all the vulnerability and immediacy that MacLaine lacked in "Sweet Charity". And who could sing and dance about as well as MacLaine, which is to say not well, but that isn't the most important thing about filmed musicals.
I didn't expect anyone to see my post let alone reply to it. This thread is years old with no current posts.
shareWell if you post on an old thread, even if it hasn't seen any activity for a decade, it'll appear on the front page for a little while. Occasionally very old discussions come back to life.
I don't suppose you've seen "The Boy Friend" with Twiggy, though.
Shirley MacLaine wrote that Gwen Verdon, who had starred in the Broadway show, suggested to her that she should pursue the lead for the film version. After MacLaine got the role, Verdon generously coached MacLaine on her performance.
sharePlus, BOX OFFICE: GV was a Broadway star, but unknown to the moviegoing public.
This is what it really boiled down to...Gwen Verdon was a stage star, not a movie star. The producers wanted a "movie" name in the starring role. This is a Hollywood tradition as old as the hills. There are rare exceptions, like when Verdon was allowed to play Lola in the film version of DAMN YANKEES, but these are very rare exceptions.
There's a simpler explanation for the absence of Gwen Verdon in the movie Sweet Charity: namely, that by the time the movie was made, she was just too old to play the part on film. Charity, like the character's prototype Cabiria in The Nights of Cabiria, is supposed to be in the later part of young-adulthood, not pre-menopausal. Gwen Verdon, had she starred in the film, would have been in her early to mid forties during shooting (she was born in 1925).
Add to that the fact that she seems to have been a woman who had the misfortune of looking several years older than she really was. Watch her in Damn Yankees (1958), and I trust you'll see what I mean: she's an amazing dancer, but still she's not quite convincing as a temptress extraordinaire. This prematurely-aged look would not have mattered much in the stage version of Sweet Charity, which opened in 1965, but on film it would have been absurd.
Nobody seems to be talking about the fact that John McMartin was carried over from Broadway to the movie version. If boffo box office was a concern, why not a male movie star to play Oscar?
What I would really like to know is why the song "My Personal Property," a superior opening number that made me love the movie from the beginning, hadn't previously been used on Broadway. The Broadway opening number, "Look At Yourself," is blah and unworthy of Coleman & Fields.
reldevik
Um, like the correct title for Charity's opening song/number in the stage-version is "You Should See Yourself".
Oy!
"...I love Jimmy Marsden so much I want to kick him in the face!" - Adam Shankman to Nikki
To get an idea of Verdon's energy levels, watch DAMN YANKEES sometime - musical numbers are filmed over the course of several days or weeks. Verdon had several big numbers in that show, and she performed them all within the show's running time of less than 3 hours - EIGHT PERFORMANCES A WEEK! She was equally as vivacious in the stage version of SWEET CHARITY, and critics who reviewed CHICAGO in 1975 agreed that, even at half-speed, Verdon was something to see (one reason the role of Velma was beefed-up for the show was so that Verdon, who had carried the dancing in DAMN YANKEES, NEW GIRL IN TOWN, REDHEAD and SWEET CHARITY wouldn't have to carry it all at the age of fifty). CHICAGO was Bob Fosse's final Broadway gift to his greatest muse and instrument, Gwen Verdon.
"Stone-cold sober I find myself absolutely fascinating!"---Katharine Hepburn
What I would really like to know is why the song "My Personal Property," a superior opening number that made me love the movie from the beginning, hadn't previously been used on Broadway.It was written specifically for the film. so it couldn't have been used on Broadway because it didn't exist.
"Nobody seems to be talking about the fact that John McMartin was carried over from Broadway to the movie version. If boffo box office was a concern, why not a male movie star to play Oscar?"
MacLaine was considered big enough to carry SWEET CHARITY box-office wise, which permitted the casting of McMartin - a similar philosophy was employed in the cast of 1957's PAJAMA GAME - the casting of Doris Day was considered enough box-office insurance to allow Donen and Abbott to import several members of the Broadway cast to Hollywood to reprise their roles, including leading man John Raitt. Had Raitt's role been cast first with a major star, it's likely they would have had Janis Paige re-create her stage role (Paige, like Day, was a Warner Bros. alumni). PAJAMA GAME was Raitt's big moment on the screen, but he didn't come across well on the screen and returned the stage, where, despite his impressive voice, he never again achieved the success he'd enjoyed with CAROUSEL and PAJAMA GAME. McMartin's career has also been mainly on the stage, where he's been a dependable player for over 4 decades.
"If I'd been a ranch they'd have named me the 'Bar-None'."
"Had Raitt's role been cast first with a major star, it's likely they would have had Janis Paige re-create her stage role (Paige, like Day, was a Warner Bros. alumni)."
You mean "alumna," don't you?
alumnus - masculine singular
alumna - feminine singular
alumni - masculine plural
alumnae - feminine plural
I wonder whether the relatively small size of Oscar's role would have been a problem if a major movie star was sought. Oscar doesn't show up until the last scene of Act I and never really becomes a co-starring role. At the time, the film's publicity exploited the presence of Sammy Davis Jr. as if he were MacLaine's costar. I'm sure glad I never saw the film with a theater full of Davis fans expecting to see him in more than one scene.
In the early 1980s, the idea was floated of casting one actor as Charlie, Vittorio and Oscar as a way of attracting two stars to a potential Broadway revival. (I saw Jess Richards play the combined roles outside New York, and it was very effective.) Of course, the revival ended up happening with separate actors in the role and Debbie Allen as Charity (then Ann Reinking and then, on tour, the ideally cast Donna McKechnie).
I've been married to one Marxist and one Fascist, and neither one would take the garbage out.
I saw that revival! Both ladies were great, but Ann Reinking REALLY floored me!!!!
"Samantha! You picked a lemon in the garden of love!"
McMartin's character doesn't show up until an hour and fiften minutes into the picture. A major male star to guarantee box office interest would have necessitated serious re-writes to get him into the story about an hour earlier.
And it's not called SWEET OSCAR.
Thank you, thank you--you're most kind. In fact you're every kind.