Natalie Wood

From 1961-1965 Natalie Wood made four movies in which she had the opportunity to sing. West Side Story proved a bitter first experience when she was cajoled into thinking her vocals were going to be used, only to have them overdubbed by Marni Nixon. Ms. Wood was devastated.

In Gypsy, Natalie got her way and did virtually all her own warbling. But when the Hollywood behind-the-scenes melodrama Inside Daisy Clover came along, she found her singing capabilities once again in question.

Jackie Ward was brought in to dub spots of Natalie's vocals. This would iron out the kinks in Ms. Wood's renditions of the Andre Previn songs. Ultimately, however, Jackie covered all the bases and Natalie was left getting the short end of the stick...again. (Jackie also dubbed Nat the same year in The Great Race, singing "Sweetheart Tree.")

Lucille Ball

Lucille Ball decided she would be Mame, the grandest auntie of them all. She would co-produce the movie adaptation of the Broadway musical which was in turn based on the Broadway play Auntie Mame starring Rosiland Russell, who repeated her performance for a subsequent film version in the '50s. In Jerry Herman's Broadway musicalization, Angela Lansbury "doubled her fame" with a fiery, inspired performance that was also destined to repeat itself for the big screen and be preserved on celluloid till the end of civilization.

Alas, stirrings of a Mame movie didn't surface until Ms. Ball showed a financial interest in the project. But, of course, she wanted to star. It may have worked at one point, but by 1972 (when filming began) Lucy was starting to show some wear and tear. Any credibility she could muster in the role was alarmingly undermined by the fact she was huffing and puffing her way through her performance!

The talk around Hollywood was that Lucy's singing would be dubbed by Lisa Kirk, but it never came to fruition (rumors still circulate about the existence of possible tracks Lisa may have recorded).  Lucy did all her own singing and you can blame the movie's reputation on that fact alone. Here, she croaks out "If He Walked Into My Life," backed by searing orchestrations from the mind and soul of Ralph Burns.

Rosiland Russell

Okay. This is a good one. Rosiland Russell won the screen role of Mama Rose in the film version of Gypsy. Ethel Merman created the role on Broadway, where she sang the Hell out of it. Rosiland did sing on Broadway in Wonderful Town, but certainly did not have the chops to sing Mama Rose. She had recorded the Jule Styne/Stephen Sondheim songs for Gypsy's soundtrack, but the renditions were subpar. Like notoriously bad. Ethel actually possessed the Roz recordings and would play them for party guests when they were drunk! You can listen to Roz's original tracks today. In fact, Lost Vocals is a great place to view an "un-dubbing" of Roz in Gypsy. But she's bad. Real bad. That's where Lisa Kirk comes in. Lisa had sung on Broadway in Kiss Me Kate and was brought in by Warner Bros. to dub the singing for Ms. Russell in Gypsy. The concept was that Lisa would partially dub Roz's voice, resulting in a ghostly blending of the two. I am deviating a bit from this blog's rules--yet sparing you unwarranted pain--by using the track for "Rose's Turn" that was heard in the film itself, but not used on the LP release. "Rose's Turn" is mostly Lisa on the LP version, providing guaranteed listening enjoyment from your home stereo sound system in 1962, whereas you hear more of Roz's vocals when you are literally watching her sing in the movie. Basically, more Roz and less Lisa here...but enough Lisa to ease the pain. Chalk it up to Hollywood witchcraft. Can you tell which is which?

Roz's doppelgangers:

Are you a good witch....

...or a bad witch?

Jean Simmons

Jean Simmons played Desiree Armfelt in the original London production of Stephen Sondeihm's A Little Night Music. Her rendition of "If I Were A Bell" in Guys & Dolls is painful. It's much nicer listening to her croon with Marlon Brando in the duet "Woman In Love," written for the film version of Frank Loesser's Broadway smash hit.

Suzanne Pleshette

Suzanne Pleshette actually had a very legitimate singing voice. Big surprise considering the rasp of her speaking voice, which sounds like she's been drinking whiskey and smoking hashish since she was four-years-old. Arthur Laurents talks about her auditioning for the role of Louise in the original Broadway production of Gypsy. He said she had no problem being sexy, but was at a loss with the tomboy aspect of Louise's first act persona. I find this hard to believe since there is nothing more butch than Suzanne Pleshette in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

Suzanne bounced back from being snubbed from the original production of Gypsy. She replaced Anne Bancroft on Broadway in The Miracle Worker, which obviously took major acting chops. And before making The Birds, Suzanne played a nightclub singer in the Tony Curtis vehicle 40 Pounds Of Trouble, singing "If You."

Cyd Charisse

Bold, beautiful Cyd Charisse. A dancer/movie star synonymous with the golden era of the movie musical. Sweeping the world off its feet in most of MGM's major musicals, Ms. Charisse delivered an excellent Ninotchka in Cole Porter's Silk Stockings, leaving comparisons to Greta Garbo's original performance at the door. As was often the case in those days, however, Cyd's singing was also left at the door. But the woman is capable of busting out a tune and made her Broadway debut at 70 in Grand Hotel, doing her own singing (obviously) and taking on another Garbo role. Here is the demo for "It's A Chemical Reaction" using Cyd's real vocals.

Shirley Maclaine

It's not that Shirley Maclaine can't sing. She was spotted by a Hollywood agent (sent by Alfred Hitchcock no less) while filling in for Carol Haney in the musical The Pajama Game on Broadway. That resulted in Maclaine making her first film with Hitchcock. The rest is history. Or her story.

Shirley Maclaine does remind us now and then that she is a musical performer, primarily a dancer of comparable skill. Not known as a terrific songstress, her voice is thin yet distinctive. The closest she's ever come to recording in a contemporary "pop" fashion is here with "Where Am I Going?" from Bob Fosse's Sweet Charity.

Bette Davis

Bette Davis bludgeoned her way through a six-decade career in Hollywood as not only a woman of significant star quality, but also as an actress of indelible versatility. Never afraid of taking unsympathetic roles, she proved time and time again how utterly fascinating murderous, damaged, deranged women can be.

In Thank Your Lucky Stars, Bette performs a one-joke song entitled "They're Either Too Young Or Too Old" in which she laments the loss of any decent-aged studs to the draft. In 1976, she released an album bearing the name Miss Bette Davis where she reprised the ditty in stereo.

Adhering to my rules, however, I am using the original mono track from the source film soundtrack.