Kathryn Grayson 1922-2010
Soprano star of MGM’s golden age Kathryn Grayson died yesterday. The leading lady of Anchors Aweigh, Show Boat and Kiss Me Kate was 88. In the 1947 film It Happened in Brooklyn, Grayson interpolated “Où va la jeune indoue?”
Harry if my old memory serves me correctly the show you mention was the Don Lane Show- filmed in Melbourne and she was doing a short tour of some of the Aussie Clubs. Yes, the “Climb Every Mountain” was clearly Everest with a train wreck at the bottom.
It’s always sad when the idols come crashing down- but like Jeanette MacDonald, I believe the voice even in its hey day was never suited to the rigours and demands of the stage. At best it was thin but sweet – only ever good for film where there was mic’s and amplification etc. I’m told by a reliable source that even Shani Wallace in Oliver could barely be heard across the foot lights on a proper stage- and for that matter, even Barbie Streisand was always in the same boat.
Here he goes again. So, Niel, you came to the great realization that Grayson was no Maria Callas or an Ella Fitzgerald??? Get real, who ever thought she was?
I loved and greatly enjoyed Mac Donald’s, Durbin’s, Grayson’s and Jane Powell’s singing, but not for a moment in the 40′s or 50′s did I once think that they were real opera singers.
Now that Grayson is dead and we cut her to pieces with our wonderful insights about their poor singing.
ROTFLMAO
Well, Jeanette MacDonald thought SHE was. The two who are still alive haven’t let us in on their thinking. I know I certainly did — at least while I was in the theatre. I also thought Alan Ladd was at least taller than my kneecap. I thought Gregory Peck was the one to turn to in a crisis, and I thought Jane Darwell was the most beautiful woman in the world. Please think your thinks, I’ll think my thinks, and for a while we’ll just let reality go fuck itself.
Dork, y’know.
But time marches on BETSY_ANN_BOBOLINK. and I preferred to grow up and face reality. Long ago, discarding the romancing illusions of childhood and musicals going la-la-lah!. Oblivious at that time, to the bad editing: where a dance or song number was not plot integrated, but ‘jammed’ into what is normally called the continuity of a film. Nothing connected at times. Who can forget the silly ‘freeze’ grins of a Gene Kelly waiting at the end of a dance sequence for the next scene to start? Or people singing out of the blue, for the mere sake of singing in a ‘crappy love’ picture.
Oh Harry, you’re right. I know you’re right, but I also know that time is going to march on despite the fact that I’m picking a few dandelions along the way. I know that most of the time it was fake and phony — and fun. All day long I am faced with major life-and-death questions, and I urgently NEED a time when what is going on around me absolutely DOES NOT MATTER. Personally I don’t want my life to be a constant replay of “The Iceman Cometh,” and when my personal iceman cometh I’m going to throw him into the pool and say, “Now, don’t you wish you had Esther Williams handy?”
Clita del Toro ;The reason that Ella Fitzgerald was revered in the popular genre, was the fact that she realised that she had limited range capacities – but look, how she used it. From the top to the bottom of that short range, it was perfectly expressively used with insight.. A solid even supported column , so to speak. No bulges, no squeezes used in any way, in the vocal delivery. And that demands total respect even from opera fans.
Now with some of the opera singers around,today – if they used that same axiom……if only!
Uh, “here (I) go again?” You think it’s wrong that my criteria for singing evolved? “Get real”? I was a KID when I heard her. I enjoyed her. My opinion of her changed. Why do you have a problem with that. The fact of her being dead changes things? Oh boo hoo she died, no objective criteria can be stated? Are you Catholic? Old-time Roman Catholic, bad-to-speak-ill-of-the-dead Catholic? My words about Grayson are affectionate – that I found some traits not of the highest calibre does not remove the affection. ‘s called being objective.
Who cares what Jeanette thunk? She was gorgeous, was fun to watch and to listen to.
The point is that they were MOVIE STAHS~! Get it–MOVIE STAHS!
One of my favorite movie star singers was Rita Hayworth–and she didn’t even sing in her movies–dubbed!
This was and is pure Hollywood, not the Met!!!!! Enjoy it for what it was.
Rita didn’t sing “Put the Blame on Mame”? Lord, dreams do crack up on Parterre!
She did dance it, though…
Thank goddess for double-sided tape.
They say that in the snippet at the end of the movie where she reprises a few bars of”Blame Mame” it’s her actual singing voice. She could have probably sung the whole thing, but the studios preferred to dub stars who weren’t known as singers.
Thanks for a generous, well reasoned and historically aware eulogy for a lady many (including my dear father) loved to see and hear. I agree with your estimation that something caught fire in Kiss Me Kate. She sizzles there. Too often she was otherwise on a low burner. (I sort of like Two Sisters from Beantown, though, because the Studio Waxworks hadn’t worked her over yet.)
Thanks, Miz G., for all the fun you clearly had while giving audiences so much fun, too.