Flicks in Five: Putting music in their mouths

Overdubbing is when an actor portraying a part in a musical doesn't do his or her own singing. It doesn't necessarily mean the actor is a lousy singer, but it can mean the actor doesn't think his or her singing voice was quite right for the role.

Vanessa Redgrave was overdubbed as Guinevere in the film version of Camelot (1967), and there are a couple of instances of overdubbing in the film South Pacific. It turned out Ezio Pinza (who had starred on Broadway) died just before filming was to begin, so they cast Rossano Brazzi, who was very wonderful in the role — but he couldn't sing. So they got Met Opera star Giorgio Tozzi to overdub him. Juanita Hall, who played Bloody Mary, was a fine singer who trained at Juilliard, but for some reason when it came to the movie version for "Bali Hai" and "Happy Talk," they had Muriel Smith, who played Bloody Mary in the London production of South Pacific, do overdubbing for Hall.

Perhaps one of the most famous voiceover artists for stars on the big screen was Marni Nixon; for instance, she gave voice to Natalie Wood's Maria for West Side Story.

Nixon made several appearances on screen herself, most notably, as one of the nuns in the movie version of The Sound of Music. She was also hired to overdub Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. This was a huge disappointment to Hepburn because she had done a lot of preparation for the film. Hepburn does sing a couple of her own songs in the film; specifically, the introduction to "I Could Have Danced All Night" and all of "Just You Wait, Henry Higgins." But overdubbing was chosen for the other songs simply because it seemed too much trouble to transpose the entire score down to Hepburn's mezzo-alto range.

In Breakfast at Tiffany's, however, Hepburn's real voice is used when her character sits on the fire escape and sings Henry Mancini's "Moon River."

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