Sally Kellerman

Sally Kellerman sings Burt Bacharach. Sally (middle pic, right) was Major "Hot Lips" Houlihan in the 1970 movie M*A*S*H and did voice-overs for all those Hidden Valley Ranch commercials. Unmistakable speaking voice, so there's a certain novelty to her doing a Bacharach song. The movie is Lost Horizon and the song is "Reflections."

Lost Horizon, like many movie musicals of the early 70's, was butchered after opening night. Many scenes and songs were cut out, and an infamous fertility dance sequence has remained mysteriously lost...forever! Very Wicker Man.

Cybill Shepherd

The big thing about the film At Long Last Love is that, instead of the actors lip-syncing to previously recorded singing tracks, director Peter Bogdanovich had the actors SING LIVE, wearing earpieces guiding them with a piano accompaniment (as Tom Hooper recently perfected in Les Miserables). It was much much much maligned when it was released and has been since called one of the worst movies of all time.

But there is a light. The burgeoning cinemaphiles of today are looking at At Long Last Love with a new appreciation for its experimental nature. Bogdanovich also shot the film in color, but using black & white costumes and sets as a nod to the films of Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers. I show this movie to friends to see how they'll react, and they always genuinely enjoy it.

At Long Last Love is a double LP soundtrack. (There's a lot of singing.) Which song to best showcase Cybill Shepherd? I chose "Which" over "I Get A Kick Out Of You" since "Which" is a relatively obscure Cole Porter song as opposed to one of the most over-sung songs of all time. "Which" is amusing and clever, Cybill is appropriately over-the-shoulder, and Eileen Brennan cracks me up talking through the number.

Blythe Danner

Gwynnie's Mom beat out Betty Buckley when the original Broadway cast of 1776 filmed the movie version of the successful musical. When I saw Ms. Danner onstage in Follies, a friend said he constantly wanted her to just cough up a loogie to get that gurgle out of her voice. You don't hear it so much on this track. "He Plays The Violin" is a truly lovely moment in 1776 for Blythe. Her singing is competent and sweet, and the orchestra works up a damn good lather. It's beautifully filmed in the backyard of Thomas Jefferson's brownstone, dancing around fountains and gardens on a colonial summer's day...so much fun. So much fun.

Sophia Loren

Sophia has dabbled in singing off and on during her career, but here she is at her rawest. Growling out her final testament to her character Aldonza, Sophia lets it loose. Is she any good? You decide.

Recently, she sang in Rob Marshall's Nine, and altho pretty, it's nothing like "Aldonza." As a matter of fact, her character in Nine originally sang the title song of the show, which was replaced with a far easier tune to sing.

When I viewed Man Of La Mancha for the first time with a friend, we laughed like banshees at her howl at the end of "Aldonza." Listen for it, it's a hoot!

Audrey Hepburn

First challenge: get that bonus feature off the 2 DVD set of My Fair Lady where Audrey is singing "Show Me" without the help of Marni Nixon. Raw. I ended up grabbing the audio of it off a YouTube post, stereo mix intact. This track is particularly definitive for me since you can hear Audrey bellowing away over Andre Previn's galvanic orchestrations and conducting. Bill Shirley sings as well, as the singing voice of Jeremy Brett's Freddy Eynsford-Hill. If you know the movie, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Originally, Jack Warner wanted Cary Grant as Professor Higgins and James Cagney as Doolittle. I think they shoulda done it! They told Audrey that if she refused Eliza, they'd go to Liz Taylor. What's a poor girl to do but work her butt off preparing to sing the songs that would be eventually taken away from her and given to a better singer? Same thing happened to Natalie in West Side Story. Sometimes movie magic can be so tragic.

Leslie Caron

Leslie Caron really wanted to do her own singing in Gigi, as she had in Lili (and as she is currently doing onstage in Paris as Mme. Armfelt in A Little Night Music). She wasn't even allowed to do the easy stuff in "The Parisians" and "The Night They Invented Champagne." Here she records "Say A Prayer For Me Tonight" and you can hear Andre Previn playing her melody line on the piano. Annoying!

Gigi's orchestrations were completely changed before release of the film, opting for simpler arrangements. Previn accompanied the actors while they sang in isolation booths. I think the actors lip-synced to their piano/vocals during filming, then an orchestra was added to the tracks...twice!

I remember being genuinely intrigued with this movie as a thirteen-year-old. I know, how gay can you get? But it was always on HBO at Peter Howard's house, and I always got involved. "You just came over to watch our HBO" Peter's Mom would say. No, Pete's Mom, it was just Gigi...and those videos by that new girl Madonna.

IDEA

Although always fascinated by the female voice, it wasn’t till I was playing Caliban in The Tempest four years ago that I seriously contemplated the idea of gathering a bunch of female vocal tracks: actresses who were not known as singers yet were required to sing in a film. Hmmmmm....

Like many, I’m drawn to car wrecks and one side of this project was to see how bad a performance could be. But the main reason was because I love the vulnerability of singing, particularly in the untrained voice. I think the warmth I felt in the cast of The Tempest allowed me to be more vulnerable than usual. My performance benefited from that, and I was interested in finding that among known actresses who dared to take a leap into the unknown world of song.


RULES

No actress can be repeated.

No film can be repeated.

EXECUTION

LP to CD conversion.

DVD to audio conversion.