Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with one of the funniest Daffy Duck Looney Tunes cartoons, the 1950 The Scarlet Pumpernickel, (co-starring Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, and Sylvester,) and directed by Chuck Jones.
This short was one of the very few times that Mel Blanc voiced Elmer Fudd, who plays the role of an innkeeper here. Elmer was usually voiced by Arthur Q. Bryan, but since the character had only one line of dialogue, Mel Blanc was told to imitate Bryan's voice for the character.
Before the start of our feature presentation, the following short is very appropo given the fact that the staff of ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour was forced to clean out the staff frig while I was undergoing my frontier surgery -
So remember, if the container in question is sealed, not damaged and not dented or bloated, even though it past it's expiration date - it probably good for another year.
We've picked another entry from the excellent reference book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Schneider. Today's film is the 1964 near perfectly executed Lerner and Loewe musical, My Fair Lady, directed by George Cukor, (based on the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion,) starring Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White, and Gladys Cooper. While My Fair Lady was the most expensive film to produce at the time, the film was an immediate critical and commercial success, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1964 and went on to win eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor. James Cagney was originally offered the role of Alfred Doolittle. When he pulled out at the last minute, it went to the man who played it on Broadway, Stanley Holloway. Cary Grant, Noel Coward, Michael Redgrave and George Sanders were all considered for the role of Henry Higgins before Rex Harrison was finally chosen to reprise his Broadway role.
Even though there was a groundswell of support for the musical's original star, Julie Andrews, Jack Warners argued that Audrey Hepburn's box-office power would help the film much more than anything Andrews, who had yet to make a film, could bring him. Ironically, Andrews, whom most people associated with Eliza Doolittle thanks to sales of the show's original cast album, had only been a last minute choice for the role on stage. She was brought in after Mary Martin, Deanna Durbin and Dolores Gray had all turned it down. So please join us here at The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour and sit back, get comfortable and enjoy watching My Fair Lady.
When Audrey Hepburn (Eliza Doolittle) was first informed that her voice wasn't strong enough and that she would have to be dubbed, she walked out. She returned the next day and, in a typically graceful Hepburn gesture, apologized to everybody for her "wicked behavior." Audrey Hepburn later admitted she would never have accepted the role of Eliza Doolittle if she had known that producer Jack L. Warner intended to have nearly all of her singing dubbed. After making this movie, Hepburn resolved not to appear in another movie musical unless she could do the singing on her own.
Demand Euphoria!
No comments:
Post a Comment