Threaded Order Chronological Order
| re: Did Barbra fill the theatre with sound naturally or was there amplification in 1964? nm | |
| Posted by: tmdonahue 08:27 am EDT 08/08/22 | |
| In reply to: Did Barbra fill the theatre with sound naturally or was there amplification in 1964? nm - young-walsingham 07:43 am EDT 08/08/22 | |
|
|
|
| To actually address your question. I didn't see the original FG. I was twelve. But my later partner/husband did. He told the anecdote several times that he got home from seeing it and told his roommate, "It's a radio show," meaning miked throughout. Jim was a theatergoer and to his knowledge, FG was the first show to use radio mikes. Before that, if shows were amplified at all they used ground row mikes, mikes on the front of the stage floor, that amplified the sound generally. The early radio miked shows had problems of course: occasional feedback, sometime local signals such as from police seeping into the feed. And of course, the stardom of Ethel Merman and Mary Martin et al were based in part that they had voices that could carry to the balconies along with enunciation that could put across lyrics most audience members had never heard before. (There was more to their talents that just this.) |
|
| reply to this message |
| re: Did Barbra fill the theatre with sound naturally or was there amplification in 1964? nm | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 08:54 am EDT 08/08/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Did Barbra fill the theatre with sound naturally or was there amplification in 1964? nm - tmdonahue 08:27 am EDT 08/08/22 | |
|
|
|
| Streisand wore a body mike. A number of other star performers had preceded her in wearing body mikes on Broadway. As far as I know, no one else in the cast wore one. I think some book or article implies that everyone was miked, but that would have been bizarre on Broadway in 1964, and I think it is not true. Floor mikes came along fairly early in the careers of Merman and Martin. Martin may have been the first person to wear a body mike on Broadway. That was in Peter Pan, but (if we can trust what she said) it was turned only when she was flying. She was also wore one in Hello, Dolly! on tour and elsewhere, and I believe she wore on in I Do! I Do! |
|
| reply to this message |
| re: Did Barbra fill the theatre with sound naturally or was there amplification in 1964? nm | |
| Posted by: Amiens 10:45 am EDT 08/08/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Did Barbra fill the theatre with sound naturally or was there amplification in 1964? nm - AlanScott 08:54 am EDT 08/08/22 | |
|
|
|
| Alan, do you (or does anyone) know where these body mics on Streisand and Martin were situated on their bodies or costumes? Not that I doubt that they wore them, but I can't recall ever seeing evidence of the mics in production photos. Were the mics really that tiny and able to be placed so far from their mouths that they wouldn't be seen? I saw Streisand in Funny Girl when I was a teenager but could have easily missed spotting her mic. I had been a precocious young fan since her first album and was disappointed to see her more or less "walk through" the first numbers in the show, before I even understood the term. She finally came alive singing People and was then, as expected, brilliant throughout the rest of the show. Also, those bagels hanging from Private Schwartz's belt were even there in the original production, painted red, white and blue. I think they can be glimpsed in color photos (I still haven't seen the revival). |
|
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: Did Barbra fill the theatre with sound naturally or was there amplification in 1964? nm | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 07:11 pm EDT 08/08/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Did Barbra fill the theatre with sound naturally or was there amplification in 1964? nm - Amiens 10:45 am EDT 08/08/22 | |
|
|
|
| I think body mikes back then were always on the costumes, usually in the chest area. They were relatively easy to hide in the costumes or to be made to seem part of the costume. In her autobiography, Martin says that even though she was fairly flat-chested until she was 50, she still had to try to flatten her breasts as Peter Pan. So she wore a girdle with the legs cut off and she "pulled it on upside down," over her shoulders. She wrote, "The cut-down girdle was also handy for holding the microphone, because all during the 'I'm Flying' number I was sailing so high into the wings that the sound wouldn't come down unaided. I had a mike which slipped into a little green pocket where the girdle and I met at the top. The batteries for the mike were attached to my harness by a belt at the back, and I used it only during the flying ballet." It may be that some performers who were body mikes in performance did not wear them at photo sessions. |
|
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| Fascinating! | |
| Posted by: Amiens 07:41 pm EDT 08/08/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Did Barbra fill the theatre with sound naturally or was there amplification in 1964? nm - AlanScott 07:11 pm EDT 08/08/22 | |
|
|
|
| Thanks for your response, Alan. I find it so interesting that whatever the mikes were like back then, they were apparently very successfully hidden. How distressing that modern mics have been so readily accepted as something we're "not supposed to see" yet are often glaringly evident on too many foreheads. Clearly, the sound designers won the battle over the costume and wig designers. And not be argumentative, but there are so many production photos of Streisand in FG, and her gowns for People, You Are Woman and Music That Makes Me Dance are all quite low cut in the neck line.....can it really be those photos are all from staged photo shoots where the mikes could be removed? That's still a bit of a mystery to me. |
|
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: Fascinating! | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 11:13 pm EDT 08/08/22 | |
| In reply to: Fascinating! - Amiens 07:41 pm EDT 08/08/22 | |
|
|
|
| She's still with us...someone should ask her lol. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: Did Barbra fill the theatre with sound naturally or was there amplification in 1964? nm | |
| Posted by: Delvino 10:11 am EDT 08/08/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Did Barbra fill the theatre with sound naturally or was there amplification in 1964? nm - AlanScott 08:54 am EDT 08/08/22 | |
|
|
|
| I always appreciate this mic discussions. I suspect the first obvious miking that I heard -- Pearl Bailey's Dolly, National Theater tryout, Washington DC (high school; fall of '67) -- might've been something like the Streisand sound. It was obvious that no one else had a mic but Bailey, and it had a decided "captured" quality, a sense of the performance standing apart. My mom and I even talked about it on the drive home. The Bailey vocals were charming -- she could certainly sing beautifully -- but hers was not a big voice, and the mic made sense. Yet it was odd that her dialog stood out, too. If memory serves. I was of course startled to learn that Promises, Promises (which I saw in the same DC theater in the fall of '68), famously one of the first shows to carefully structure and isolate instruments in the pit and allow the sound mix from the back of the house, per the composer's wishes, did not use body mics (I have a friend who stood by for Fran). People have argued this for years, but as the expert Alan notes, it's never been an exact science until recent decades. I'm now wondering how obviously the Streisand vocals stood apart. |
|
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: Did Barbra fill the theatre with sound naturally or was there amplification in 1964? nm | |
| Posted by: BroadwayLover 10:45 am EDT 08/08/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Did Barbra fill the theatre with sound naturally or was there amplification in 1964? nm - Delvino 10:11 am EDT 08/08/22 | |
|
|
|
| There is a recent interview with Mimi Hines, Streisand's successor, during which she discusses the primitive mic she used while playing Fanny. This was likely the same type of mic that Barbra used. I strongly urge Funny Girl fans to view this Mimi Hines YouTube video. By the way, I saw Mimi in FG and she was very different that Streisand but equally terrific. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
Time to render: 0.224190 seconds.