| re: In Defense of Ethel Merman's Acting Ability | |
| Posted by: Snowysdad 10:46 am EDT 06/28/21 | |
| In reply to: re: In Defense of Ethel Merman's Acting Ability - Roman 07:16 am EDT 06/28/21 | |
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| Assessing Ms Merman's acting chops vs her singing is very difficult to do more than 50 years out from the height of her Broadway career. We are looking through a different lens in terms of our expectations. Today our lead Broadway performers cross back and forth, lots of TV work to go with the theater. In Ms. Merman's time the standard was to be able to give each and every audience the same quality performance and she did it by freezing her performance. The singing is very revealing over the years because I Got Rhythm was always the same I Got Rhythm even if the arrangement changed, and the truth is it never changed much. Not only the vocal inflections but physical gestures were just about locked in cement. Let's consider another singer whose era overlapped the much more beloved (at least by the LGBTQ world), Barbara Cook. The arrangements that Wally Harper did for her never varied through the years and the only difference between versions of the same song is whether she was with Wally alone, Wally and a bass or an orchestra. A concert she did Live from Drury Lane Theater, but not the one that was used for the CD Live from London has a number of repeat tunes from her standard repertoire (Better with a Band, I See Your Face Before Me/Change Partners, Sweet Georgia Brown) and only someone with really good ears could hear much difference between these performances (excellent) and other versions of them. She was almost a machine in her ability to keep her performance level even. So..........why do we carp about Ethel Merman doing the same thing when we all love Barbara Cook's similar ability? |
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