Song of Bernadette

Into the Woods, It’s Time to Go

First, musicals are an acquired taste. That’s because they demand a massive suspension of disbelief. It’s a difficult stretch to accept the reality of a world where characters suddenly burst into song accompanied by an unseen orchestra. OK, so let’s say you take that leap of faith and buy into the logic-defying premise. The cast wins Tony Awards, you buy, or download, the original cast recording, and then Hollywood snatches up the film rights, only to replace your favorite singers with bankable box-office draws, igniting a passion to overturn furniture and stomp a hole through the floor. Which is exactly what happened in the Moviehouse when we learned that three-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep was going to play The Witch in the Christmas Day release of Disney’s big-screen version of the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical “Into the Woods.”

You see, you have to appreciate our prejudice that the role of The Witch belongs to Bernadette Peters. Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, with a book by James Lapine, “Into the Woods” interweaves several Brothers Grimm fairy tales in a twisted perspective on a number of themes, including growing up, parenting and the legacy left to children, the harsh consequences of wish fulfillment, and mortality, all with savvy contemporary sensibilities. The show’s main characters are borrowed from “Cinderella,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and “Rapunzel,” as well as “Snow White” and “Sleeping Beauty.”

The musical’s strings are tied together by an original story concerning the childless couple of a baker and his wife, whose desire to start a family leads to an encounter with The Witch. (Above) Erstwhile ‘80s rocker Ellen Foley (best known for belting out a speaker-throbbing duet with Meat Loaf on “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”) originated the role of The Witch at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre in December 1986, under the direction of James Lapine. Foley was replaced by Bernadette Peters, who took the role to Broadway in 1987, again directed by Lapine. “Into the Woods” won a number of Tony Awards, including Best Actress in a Musical (Joanna Gleason, as the baker’s wife), in a season dominated by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera.”

 

The Baker (Chip Zien) and The Baker's Wife (Joanna Gleason)
are spellbound by The Witch (Bernadette Peters) in "Into the Woods."

Bernadette Peters left the show after only five months due to an ill-advised commitment to appear in a film called “Slaves of New York” (below), written by Tama Janowitz and universally slammed by critics. (Roger Ebert commented, “I detest ‘Slaves of New York’ so much that I distrust my own opinion.”)

The Witch was subsequenty played by, among others, Phylicia Rashad, Nancy Dussault, and, again, Ellen Foley, but what's important here is that Bernadette Peters owned that role!

Ever since the first collaboration with Stephen Sondheim resulted in a Tony Award nomination for her performance, along with Mandy Patinkin, in the 1984 Broadway production of “Sunday in the Park with George,” Bernadette Peters has been universally revered as the foremost interpreter of the works of Sondheim, from “Sunday in the Park” to “A Bed and a Chair: A New York Love Affair,” with “Gypsy,” “Follies,” “Into the Woods,” and “A Little Night Music” in between.

 

Youngsters Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, and Stephen Sondheim have their
sharpies ready for autographs for fans of "Sunday in the Park with George."

Difficulty arises in a question of exactly who is whom’s muse. “I’m drawn to him,” Bernadette once observed about Sondheim. “I do love his music. I love singing his songs and getting involved in his words…They just ring very true to me. His songs make so much sense. They have such depth. There are layers and layers to his songs. You sing a song and the next time you sing it, it can mean something else totally.” Not surprisingly, she titled a 1996 Carnegie Hall concert “Sondheim Etc.”

 

...Decades later, Stephen Sondheim and Bernadette Peters are still greeting fans.

According to Stephen Sondheim, Bernadette Peters’ appeal is of a transcendent nature. “She’s so endearing as a personality,” he said, “she could play an ax murderer and you’d forgive her.”

Sondheim has always admired the way Peters shapes a role to the curves and contours of her own style, stating, “There’s an aspect of Bernadette that’s always Bernadette – she brings a ‘Bernadette-ishness’ And yet she completely plays the character.” Not that Sondheim composes specifically for Peters. “People who like to act and singers who like to act are attracted to my songs,” he explained, “they’re about acting.”

Admittedly, Bernadette Peters' screen career can't rival that of
Meryl Streep, a performer with the most Oscar nominations - 18 -
of any actor, but in the 1970s and 1980s, Peters delivered several
audience-pleasing and critically praised performances, including
Mel Brooks' "Silent Movie," as buxom nightclub vamp Vilma;
"The Jerk," as Steve Martin's wife (above); "Pennies from Heaven,"
as a wide-eyed school teacher-turned hollow-eyed prostitute;
the 1982 film version of "Annie," as petty thief Lily St. Regis;
"Pink Cadillac," as a fugitive pursued by skip-tracer Clint Eastwood;
and "Impromptu" (directed by her Broadway "Into the Woods"
director, James Lapine) as Franz Liszt's mistress, Marie D'Agoult.

So you understand, if not fully empathize with, our outrage when it was announced that Meryl Streep would portray The Witch in the film version of "Into the Woods", due in theaters on Christmas Day. Both Streep and Bernadette Peters are relatively the same age (Streep is 65, Peters 66), but Bernadette isn’t a movie star, so the role went to the movie star. Needless to say – but we’ll say it and talk about it anyway – this scenario has been replayed over and over in Hollywood.

The Singer Not the Song

Robert Alda, the father of actor Alan Alda, was a singer and dancer in vaudeville and burlesque who made his screen debut playing George Gershwin in 1945's "Rhapsody in Blue" before winning a Tony Award for his portrayal of high-rolling gambler Sky Masterson in the 1950 Broadway musical “Guys and Dolls.” For the 1955 film adaptation, Gene Kelly was interested in the role, but producer Samuel Goldwyn insisted on Marlon Brando, who was the world’s biggest box office draw at the time. Frank Sinatra, who also wanted the Sky Masterson part but was cast as Masterson’s pal, Nathan Detroit, repeatedly referred to Brando as “Mumbles.” Like his costar, Jean Simmons, also a stranger to musicals, Brando did his own singing, although his songs had to be constructed piecemeal from multiple takes.

You can almost read the humiliation on Frank Sinatra's countenance as he is
relegated to playing second banana Nathan Detroit to Marlon Brando's coveted
role of Sky Masterson. Apparently, Frank's Best Supporting Actor Oscar for
"From Here to Eternity" didn't carry the same weight as Marlon's Best Actor
Academy Award for "On the Waterfront." 

Carol Lawrence, who made her Broadway debut in 1952, received a Tony Award nomination for her performance as Maria in the original Broadway production of “West Side Story” in 1957, a role she played for two years and then again in the 1960 season. For the 1961 movie version, Hollywood starlet Natalie Wood landed the part of Maria. Her singing voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon, while the songs by Richard Beymer, who played Maria’s ill-fated boyfriend Tony, were dubbed by singer Jimmy Bryant. (Bryant didn’t receive screen credit, but he admitted Beymer was “a nice guy and every time he did an interview he would mention my name.”)

Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood put their
best synching lips forward in "West Side Story."

Marni Nixon was a soprano who became well known for dubbing the singing voices of a number of leading actresses in screen musicals. Time magazine called her “The Ghostess with the Mostest.” One of her earliest movie assignments was dubbing the singing voice for Deborah Kerr in the 1956 film version of the Broadway musical, for which she was paid $420. Nixon provided the singing voice for Natalie Wood again in the 1962 film musical “Gypsy,” based on the memoir by renowned stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.

Julie Andrews was nominated for a Tony Award as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle in the 1956 hit Broadway musical “My Fair Lady,” but she was denied the role in the 1964 film because the producers didn’t feel she was a movie star. Audrey Hepburn was a movie star. Andrews reportedly said she “threw a few tantrums” when she found out she wouldn’t be playing Eliza onscreen. Hepburn herself felt that Andrews should have been cast as Eliza. Studio head Jack Warner told Hepburn that even if she turned the part down, Andrews still wouldn’t make the picture; apparently, Elizabeth Taylor desperately desired the role.

No hard feelings: Julie Andrews, who won the Best Actress Oscar
1964's "Mary Poppins," is congratulated by "My Fair Lady" star
Audrey Hepburn, who can't seem to let go of the statuette.

(Liz finally got the opportunity to show off her pipes, purring, in her own breathy, limited range, Stephen Sondheim’s pop culture hit “Send in the Clowns” in “A Little Night Music,” a 1977 film musical that garnered mostly negative reviews, much of the negativity centered on Taylor’s seesawing weight from scene to scene.)

Much of Audrey Hepburn’s singing in “My Fair Lady” was dubbed by the ubiquitous Marni Nixon, while Hepburn herself did sing most of “Just You Wait,” along with the song’s reprise. As a matter of fact, Hepburn sang her own songs in the 1957 movie musical “Funny Face,” costarring Fred Astaire. She introduced the signature tune “Moon River” in the 1961 film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” The song had been tailored for her low-mezzo voice. Recordings of some of Hepburn’s original vocal performances for “My Fair Lady” were released in 1990, giving the public the opportunity to decide if the dubbing was necessary.

(Marni Nixon’s actual first screen appearance was as Sister Sophia in 1965’s “The Sound of Music.” On the DVD commentary, director Robert Wise commented that audiences were finally able to see the woman whose voice they knew so well. When Julie Andrews first met Nixon, she exclaimed, “Marni, I’m a fan of yours!”)

Hollywood's favorite ghost vocalist, Marni Nixon, made her screen debut in
1965's "The Sound of Music" as Sister Sophia (second from the left).

Julie Andrews was nominated for a Tony Award for her role as Guenevere in the original 1960 Broadway cast of the musical “Camelot,” however, by the time she was asked to reprise the part for the 1967 screen adaptation, she had become such a popular movie star that other commitments prevented her from accepting. (Ironically, “Camelot” was produced by Jack Warner, the same studio big shot who, three years earlier, deemed Andrews wasn’t enough of a box-office draw to star in “My Fair Lady.”)

Besides Julie Andrews’ nomination, Richard Burton won a Tony Award for talk-singing his way through the part of King Arthur in “Camelot,” while singer Robert Goulet made his Broadway debut as Lancelot. Joshua Logan, who directed the film version of “Camelot,” insisted on casting actors not known for their singing ability: Richard Harris as Arthur, Vanessa Redgrave as Guenevere, and Franco Nero (an Italian actor best known until then as the star of several spaghetti westerns, including the original “Django”) as Lancelot. Predictably, it was Logan’s insistence that contributed to the movie’s disappointing critical and commercial reception.

King Arthur (Richard Harris) dubs Lancelot (Franco Nero) as a Knight of the
Round Table while Queen Guenevere (Vanessa Redgrave) looks on. It was bad
enough that they asked Vanessa Redgrave to sing, but she'll never live down
that getup.

Guenevere’s songs were purposely transposed down to accommodate Vanessa Redgrave’s limited vocal range. Franco Nero, who fell in love with Redgrave during the production (they were finally married, after a relationship of 39 years, in 2006), had his singing dubbed by tenor Gene Merlino. Richard Harris, despite his limitations, actually released a couple of popular albums after “Camelot,” landing a hit with the first recording of Jimmy Webb’s “MacArthur Park” (which Harris insisted on singing as “MacArthur’s Park”).

In a recent blog, self-proclaimed “TV Comedy Writer” Ken Levine, an Emmy Award winner for “Cheers” whose credits also include “M*A*S*H,” “The Simpsons,” “Frasier,” and “”Everybody Loves Raymond” (besides behind-the-microphone gigs as a Major League Baseball announcer for the Mariners, Padres, and Orioles), re-emphasized our take that “most studios need movie STARS to open movies. It’s as simple as that. The $50 million bet. Broadway performers may be better, but they’re relatively unknown to the movie-buying public. Recognition and star power are way more important to Hollywood than talent.”

Levine pointed out, “In the Bob Fosse movie version of ‘Sweet Charity,’ Shirley MacLaine played the wondrous Gwen Verdon part, and poor Miss V. was hired to coach MacLaine.” MacLaine recalled that Gwen Verdon personally encouraged her to pursue the film role, and afterward, Verdon not only generously offered to coach MacLaine but also worked without credit as an assistant choreographer on the picture.

Broadway's "Sweet Charity" (Gwen Verdon) and
Hollywood's (Shirley MacLaine) have a posedown.
"Sweet Charity" was based on the 1957 Italian drama
"Nights of Cabiria," directed by Federic Fellini, sanitizing
the original film's prostitute into a dancehall girl.

At least when Hollywood took on the 1958 film adaptation of the 1955 Broadway musical “Damn Yankees” – a retelling of the soul-selling Faust legend updated for the baseball rivalry between the New York Yankees and the Washington Senators (predecessors of the Minnesota Twins) – Gwen Verdon, who won a Tony Award for her portrayal of devilish seductress Lola, had the privilege of reprising the role onscreen (stage and screen director George Abbott had been considering Mitzi Gaynor and Marilyn Monroe), although her trademark stage hip bumps and grinds were omitted during awkward pauses in filmed musical numbers.

Gwen Verdon informs Tab Hunter that "Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets"
in the 1958 screen version of "Damn Yankees."

Fans of the Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof” were upset when their beloved Zero Mostel, who had originated the role of Tevye the milkman in a Tony Award-winning performance in 1964, was passed over for the 1971 film version in favor of Topol, a 35-year-old Israeli-born actor who had portrayed Tevye in a long-running British production of the musical. Director Norman Jewison maintained that he wanted the picture to be more authentic and a more “believable” actor was required. Jewison said, “One reason I liked Topol’s performance so much on the stage was that he projected his sense of destiny as, and pride in being, a Jew. His Tevye never loses dignity and strength.”

(Top) Zero Mostel and  Topol (bottom) compete in a dance-off in the stage and
film versions of "Fiddler on the Roof."

Zero Mostel long held a grudge over not getting the film role. Years later, when his son, actor Josh Mostel, was on the phone, discussing the part of Blotto in the new “Animal House” spinoff sitcom “Delta House,” Zero shouted, “Tell them to ask Topol’s son if he wants the job!”

Richard Kiley won a Tony Award for originating the role of Don Quixote in the 1965 Broadway musical “Man of La Mancha.” Hoping to repeat his role in the 1972 movie version, Kiley filmed a screen test but, in the subsequent shuffle of fired directors, ended up leaving the production. When director Peter Glenville came on board, he wanted to jettison the songs, hence the casting of Peter O’Toole (with whom Glenville had worked on 1964’s “Becket”). Glenville was fired, and the songs were put back in, so O’Toole, who had recorded vocal tracks and realized his voice was inadequate, assisted the filmmakers in the search for a singing double. Singer and voice coach Simon Gilbert was chosen because his singing voice most resembled O’Toole’s speaking voice.

Peter's pipes can't compete with Sophia Loren's in "Man of La Mancha."

O’Toole’s costar, Sophia Loren, bravely did her own singing as Dulcinea, but the film was overwhelmingly roasted by critics. Time magazine referred to it as an “epically vulgar” film unworthy of a full review, calling the musical’s signature song, “The Impossible Dream” “surely the most mercilessly lachrymose hymn to empty-headed optimism since ‘Carousel’s’ ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone.’” Critic Leonard Maltin mourned that the “beautiful source material” had been “murdered and buried.”

In 1966, Angela Lansbury’s title performance in the Broadway musical “Mame” (based on Patrick Dennis’ semi-autobiographical novel Auntie Mame and the 1956 Broadway play of the same name) won her a Tony Award. In 1974, 62-year-old Lucille Ball’s title performance in the screen version of “Mame” (below) garnered her brutal criticism.

In the Bob Hope comedies "Sorrowful Jones" (1949) and
"Fancy Pants" (1950), Lucille Ball's singing voice was dubbed
by Annette Warren, who also provided the singing voice for
Jane Russell in the 1948 Bob Hope comedy "The Paleface" and
for Ava Gardner in the 1951 film version of "Show Boat."

Admittedly, before her middle-aged success on TV’s “I Love Lucy,” Ball was a chorus girl on the stage and in B-movies (or “gypsy,” as Shirley MacLaine, herself a chorus line veteran, put it), but decades later, as Time magazine’s Jay Cocks noted, “Miss Ball has been molded over the years into some sort of national monument, and she performs like one, too. Her grace, her timing, her vigor have all vanished.” While Rex Reed joked about chicken fat being smeared over the camera lens to keep the aging star in soft focus, The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael wondered, “After forty years in movies and TV, did she discover in herself an unfulfilled desire to be a flaming drag queen?” Stanley Kaufmann, in The New Republic, thought Ball would have been perfect as Mame 15 years earlier, unsparingly describing her as “too old, too stringy in the legs, too basso in the voice, and too creaky in the joints.” In an interview, Ball feebly responded to the criticism, “Mame stayed up all night and drank champagne! What did you expect her to sound like? Julie Andrews?”

Beatrice Arthur and Lucille Ball see whose mouth is bigger in 1974's "Mame."

Even costar Beatrice Arthur, who was reprising her Tony Award-winning role and whose husband directed the movie (as well as the original Broadway show), felt Ball was “terribly miscast” and regretted appearing in the film, calling it a “disaster” and a “tremendous embarrassment.” Lucille Ball never made another movie, while Broadway’s “Mame,” Angela Lansbury, found renewed popularity on a dozen seasons of TV’s “Murder, She Wrote.”

Into the Woods You Go Again

Our considered opinion in the Moviehouse is that the StephenSondheim-James Lapine
musical "Into the Woods" inspired director Terry Gilliam's 2005 fantasy adventure
"The Borthers Grimm," as well as current TV series "Once Upon a Time" and "Grimm."

The earliest attempt to bring “Into the Woods” to the screen came in the early 1990s with a script by the successful writing team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. A script reading occurred with Robin Williams as The Baker, Goldie Hawn as The Baker’s Wife, Cher as The Witch, Danny DeVito as The Giant, Steve Martin as The Wolf, and Roseanne Barr as Jack’s Mother. In 1991, Columbia Pictures and Jim Henson Productions started developing their own film version with Rob Minkoff (best known as the co-director of Disney’s “The Lion King”). By 1997, Columbia put the project into turnaround, and Variety reported that Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, and Susan Sarandon were in talks to star. After that report, any plans for a movie lay dormant for 15 years.

In January 2012, Rob Marshall was hired to direct a new adaptation of “Into the Woods” for Walt Disney Pictures. Marshall, a theater director and choreographer with five Tony Award nominations, has directed a number of television films and motion pictures, including “Chicago,” “Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Nine,” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.”

Jason Alexander as Lionel, the Prince's valet, shares
a dance with Bernadette Peters as Cinderella's
Stepmother in the 1997 Walt Disney Television
production of "Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella,"
directed by Rob Marshall.

In a March 2012 interview, Bernadette Peters pegged Marshall as the right choice to direct the film.  Peters worked with Marshall in 1997 when she portrayed Cinderella’s Stepmother in the TV movie “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” starring Brandy, Whitney Houston, and Whoopi Goldberg. “He’s so talented and he understands musicals,” Peters remarked. “All the creativity that he has brought to the world is wonderful.”

Peters said the role of The Witch “is intense, so I think it should be an actress who can be intense. I think she has great passion because she’s very passionate about her daughter and passionate about the last midnight. So I think (the right choice) is somebody who has a lot of passion.”

In June 2014, Bernadette Peters gave her blessing – sort of - to Meryl Streep and “Into the Woods,” declaring, “I think so far from what I’ve heard about the casting, I think it’s really, really being cast well with people that can really sing.”

The Witch onscreen in "Into the Woods" is portrayed by Meryl Streep (left),
in contrast to Bernadette Peters' definitive performance on Broadway (right).

Meryl Streep took opera lessons in her younger years but quit when she became “far more interested in boys and in being a cheerleader.” Certainly no stranger to warbling onscreen, she sang in “Postcards from the Edge,” “Silkwood,” and “Death Becomes Her.” In “A Prairie Home Companion” (2006), she performed four duets with Lily Tomlin and two duets with Garrison Keillor. In his review of the 2008 movie musical “Mamma Mia!”, Leonard Maltin noted, “Streep’s pipes outshine her costars.”

Three of these things belong together: Garrison Keillor, Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep,
and Linday Lohan join voices in 2006's "A Prairie Home Companion."

On November 9, 2014, not to be upstaged by the cold distractions of over-priced brand-name celebrities and multi-million-dollar computer-generated special effects, Stephen Sondheim, Peter Lapine, Bernadette Peters, and Joanna Gleason, along with other members of the original 1987 Broadway cast, reunited at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California, hosted by humorist and journalist Mo Rocca, for a warmly received “live documentary” of talk and song celebrating “Into the Woods” (below).

Four years after the Broadway premiere, the original cast performed “Into the Woods” for PBS’s “American Playhouse” in 1991 (below). Viewed again 23 years later, the vibrant production is still a witty, joyous, poignant, and moving experience – popping with Bernadette Peters’ powerhouse presence as The Witch, especially in her heart-wrenching performances of the showstoppers “Last Midnight” and “Children Will Listen” - a wondrous journey shared in the Moviehouse with unabashed suspension of disbelief.

The Witch in "Into the Woods": "I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right."

Wethinks only the combination of Stephen Sondheim, James Lapine, Bernadette Peters, and Joanna Gleason could conjure such magic, leaving us fearing that filmmakers Rob Marshall and Meryl Streep have giant shoes to fill.

"It's the last midnight. It's the last wish...Soon it will be boom - Squish!"