| re: In Defense of Ethel Merman's Acting Ability | |
| Last Edit: PlayWiz 01:48 pm EDT 06/28/21 | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 01:42 pm EDT 06/28/21 | |
| In reply to: re: In Defense of Ethel Merman's Acting Ability - JohnDunlop 01:13 pm EDT 06/28/21 | |
|
|
|
| Most shows that Merman did were musical comedies. "Gypsy" of course goes deeper, but if you watch "Call Me Madam", and I highly recommend you do (it has a great cast), it is the best example of Merman on film doing one of her hit shows, and you'll see her delivery of lines is really quite good. Writers pretty much wrote for her, and while her characters' names changed from show to show, she was playing her stage persona of down-to-earth gal but bigger than life, big-voiced and funny Ethel Merman. From what a chorus guy who had been in one of her shows told me, he liked working with her, thought she moved very well for singing star, but she pretty much did everything the same from performance to performance. Others have remarked that she would give even more when she heard someone famous and/or a friend was in the audience. There's a clip of a joint Merman/Mary Martin interview I believe where Merman said she could sometimes be singing her song and making out her grocery list in her mind of what to buy at the same time. I believe the requirements of "Gypsy" had her doing more than she had previously been asked to do, and she herself said that for the first time she had been required to act. She was proud of that. But she had been doing her version, very effectively of star musical comedy acting before. However, she apparently on stage would direct a lot of her lines to the audience rather than her fellow actors. Co-star of "Happy Hunting" Fernando Lamas called this habit out non-diplomatically at an early rehearsal and started an infamous feud between them during that production. | |
| reply | |
|
|
|
| Previous: | re: In Defense of Ethel Merman's Acting Ability - JohnDunlop 01:13 pm EDT 06/28/21 |
| Next: | Random question about cassette librettos for Sondheim shows - theatrelover1980 08:25 pm EDT 06/27/21 |
| Thread: | |
Time to render: 0.010071 seconds.