Thursday, September 21, 2006
LADY FARES POORLY
A little more than fifty years ago, George Ives and I stood in line for SRO seats to see the original Broadway production of today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film
It just shows that you can take a show out of Broadway but you can't necessarily get that show into the film can.
Sure it is good. The material is first rate and Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway bring some of the original charisma. But it is so overstuffed with Hollywood overproduction and direction that the thing is just smothered.
The orchestration and chorus are syrupy and over-arranged and the scenes are dragged out to make them dramatic. I assume this is because the leading lady cannot sing or, for that matter, lip synch very well. And she is hardly credible as the guttersnipe original.
That Julie Andrews was not given this part was and is a scandal.
George Cukor directed and all the scenes have an element of that sort of smarmy Hollywood 'let us tell you what is going on' which this show does not need.
I guess you can see that I didn't like it much.
George Ives and I had a good time though. It was in 1955, between my 1st and 2d year at MIT and I had been bitten by the show-bug during that first year.
In those days, Boston got almost all the shows before they got to NYC (along with New Haven and Philadelphia). But MFL had not played there.
We stood in the back for the matinee after being in line since about 6AM. The BO opened at 8 I think.
I don't think that I am punishing the movie for not coming up to the 1954 experience. It really is a big fluffy overproduced animal. A good one, but not that good.
I will give it a 3 out of Netflix5 because of that awful Hepburn woman.
