Why Arent' Actors Dubbed In Movie Musicals Anymore? — Page 2

Because it looks effing ridiculous, that's why.

Gostopper was replying to my post about Molaskey singing the one note in "All That Jazz" credited to Renee.

That being said, CHICAGO was not heavily auto-tuned, if at all. Sweetened, yes, but auto-tuned, no. And, yes, there is a difference.

P

The practice of dubbing vocals in films was not always done because the actor was unable to sing for themselves. Sometimes the studio felt that the star's singing voice did not match their on screen persona. Eleanor Powell, one of the greatest film dancers of all time had an accomplished Broadway belt singing voice but in the mid 1930s Alice Faye was the rage so MGM dubbed Powell's vocals with a sultry voice similar to Faye's.

Composer Doris Fisher insisted that Rita Hayworth had a more than adequate singing voice but Harry Cohn insisted that she be dubbed because her own singing voice did not match Hayworth's Love Goddess persona.

Dana Andrews was an operatically trained baritone but no one at Fox bothered to ask him if he could sing when he was cast in the 1945 State Fair and by the time of the film's shooting pre-recordings of his songs had already been done with a vocal double.

In the best of all possible worlds actors with appropriate singing talent would be cast in musical films but this has rarely been the case and the fact that it is not done with the regularity that it was done in the past is because today actors have more clout and if they insist on doing their own singing, no matter how embarrassing the end result or how it hurts the film, that's the way things are in the current film industry or, for that matter almost equally true of today's Broadway musical stage.

As far as auto tune and other sweetening practices go, as Pierce Brosnan proved in Mamma Mia, it only works up to a point and only if the actor in question has at least a minimal natural ability to carry a tune.

---

If someone dubbed Zellweger in Chicago for every note I'd immediately take them to court for failure to perform their job properly.

Sweetening on a couple notes makes more sense.

"Or how about Ava Gardner in Show Boat. Having heard her version of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" I can honestly say that it's very good. But it doesn't have the "oomph" the studio wanted so they dubbed her and she was very upset over it."

Wasn't it dubbed more than once?

---

That I don't know. I recall Lena Horne speaking about it in That's Entertainment III


Ava's voice

---

Pgenre, how do you know they didn't use auto-tune on Chicago? And when you talk about "sweetening" are you talking about adding filters beyond reverb?

Musicsnob, I agree with you though I have seen auto-tune used in real-time. But you are right about the extreme pitch shift abilities. Several of the Christines in Phantom could not hit the high E (or whatever it is) in the title song and they had her sing it lower and corrected the note in post.

---

I personally cannot stand it when I know an actor isn't singing to their own tracks. It almost kills my enjoyment of movies like My Fair Lady, The King and I and West Side Story which are otherwise brilliant films, but once I hear Marni Nixon's voice coming out of nearly every woman in those films I find it very offensive on the film maker's part and feel that they are completely undermining my intelligence as an audience member.

It's bad enough that 99.9% of the time film musicals are not sung live as it is, but that is forgivable because it is the nature of the medium. As long as the actor is syncing to their own voice it doesn't grate me.

I don't think a film like Phantom of the Opera would have been more watchable had it been dubbed across the board, it would just switch to a different kind of unwatchable.

^^^
Like when Andie MacDowell's lines were dubbed by Glenn Close in GREYSTOKE?

---

How about translated dubbing? Personally, that annoys the fvck out of me. I much prefer to read the subtitles, thank you very much.

---

"And what we now call auto-tune was somewhat different and nowhere near as widely used almost 10 years ago"

That's really not true or accurate.

---

I just thought of another instance. In A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN Old Dottie's voice is dubbed by Geena Davis, who played Young Dottie. For the longest time I thought it was Geena in old-age make-up. The similarities are uncanny, and so (I thought) was the voice. That is until I watched the Special Edition and they mentioned it in "The Making of..." featurette.

---

Then, of course, there's the retching scene at the end of Part I of GONE WITH THE WIND, when Scarlett returns to Tara after the war and attempts to eat a radish. For whatever reason, Vivien refused to heave on-camera so Olivia dubbed that part for her.

---