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| also... why does he sing it so much less in the film than he even does on the OBC? | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 08:47 pm EDT 04/03/21 | |
| In reply to: My Fair Lady -- Question about Rex Harrison's Vocals - BroadwayTonyJ 07:47 pm EDT 04/03/21 | |
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| I noticed this when rewatching it last week. I am so familiar with his performance on the album (i think OBC but maybe it's the OLC?)... and i couldn't help noticing countless discrepancies in how i remember his performance of songs and sections of them from my memory vs the film. I am not saying I want a carbon copy, I'm just taking note of much more emphasized the SPEAK part of his speak-singing was than on the recording. I'd think if he or the writers wanted to preserve it the way it was originally done, with him recreating his performance, they'd want to get that down. Obviously... it didn't matter to them, or he just wasn't able to sing it the same way, or didn't care to. But I'm curious if it's ever been spoken about... though I'm sure it probably hasn't. | |
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| re: also... why does he sing it so much less in the film than he even does on the OBC? | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 11:30 pm EDT 04/03/21 | |
| In reply to: also... why does he sing it so much less in the film than he even does on the OBC? - Chazwaza 08:47 pm EDT 04/03/21 | |
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| Chazwaza, I think if you were to compare the film soundtrack and the OBC recording closely, you would find it's not true that Harrison did any more speaking as opposed to singing on the soundtrack than on the recording. I think it's about the same ratio, but sometimes he just chose to sing or speak different sections. For that matter, Harrison made some different choices in this regard on the OLD album as compared to the OBC. | |
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| re: also... why does he sing it so much less in the film than he even does on the OBC? | |
| Posted by: huskyital (huskyital@yahoo.com) 10:22 am EDT 04/04/21 | |
| In reply to: re: also... why does he sing it so much less in the film than he even does on the OBC? - Michael_Portantiere 11:30 pm EDT 04/03/21 | |
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| When you sing live you always are different than when you are recording.....I think his live singing is one of the things that makes the film feel alive. | |
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| re: also... why does he sing it so much less in the film than he even does on the OBC? | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 01:27 pm EDT 04/04/21 | |
| In reply to: re: also... why does he sing it so much less in the film than he even does on the OBC? - huskyital 10:22 am EDT 04/04/21 | |
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| "I think his live singing is one of the things that makes the film feel alive." Agreed. "Why Can't the English?" in particular is, I think, a high point of the film for that very reason. |
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| re: also... why does he sing it so much less in the film than he even does on the OBC? | |
| Last Edit: PlayWiz 10:37 pm EDT 04/03/21 | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 10:30 pm EDT 04/03/21 | |
| In reply to: also... why does he sing it so much less in the film than he even does on the OBC? - Chazwaza 08:47 pm EDT 04/03/21 | |
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| I'd venture to say that performances by trained singers might vary somewhat from performance to performance, and Harrison certainly wasn't a musician or trained singer at all. The film was made probably about 3 or 4 years after he had finished doing the NY and London runs, too. I think he and Andrews did like 3 1/2 years of it ending around 1959 or 1960, so he had to probably work up his performance again and probably had some fresh ideas, too. He was, however, noted by the creative team, at least to my recollection Lerner, Loewe and the musical director, for having very good sense of rhythm, which helped in his patter songs. Harrison knew he had a very limited singing range, but he had a very big speaking range with very good control of that -- catch him in "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" where he actually uses a much lower speaking tone especially at the beginning of the film. But even Julie Andrews' performance changes between the OCR NY and the London recording -- plus being captured in real-time, Andrews even sniffs at one point on the London during I think "Show Me" number, because -- being a real person, she has a cold on the day of the recording session. She also declaims and does some more speak-singing, probably from having witnessed Harrison doing so much of it during his performance, she started to employ it more in some of her subsequent performances. I don't think anyone was necessarily going to call out Harrison for doing more speak-singing or any variation of what had been a smash hit performance -- he had a reputation for not being the nicest celebrity-- and I'm being generous in my wording if you knew his personal history or some of the stories about him. | |
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