One of the Rhino/That's Entertainment boxes of CDs has the complete recording Brice made for the film, and it's up on YouTube so at least you can hear it.
I watched this lately for the first time. The disc is beautiful.
"Pretty Girl" is truly amazing. But some of the choices made in the movie are hard to understand now. That whole "ballet" near the end--what in the world was that about?
And the most astonishing thing--they get Fannie Brice in...
Wow, thank you for these details!
The confusing thing is, when I see Perspecta credited, I think this was a mono film and they needed to use Perspecta to make it stereo.
The truth is the credit really only belonged on the optical prints. A Perspecta credit, in these cases, says nothing...
Aren't there some CinemaScope films that have the Perspecta logo in the credits (which is kind of confusing)? I'm thinking it sometimes shows up as a little logo near the bottom on the same title screen with the copyright notice.
I just did a quick check of a few DVDs/Blus and I can't find any...
The caption says the one on left is the stunt double, so she'd actually be appearing on camera, so her costume matches. The one on right is the stand-in, so she stood for lighting setups and wasn't on screen. Was probably more important her skin tone matched Ethel's than her costume.
Apparently Amazon does the same thing with physical media sometimes. I bought a new CD from Amazon a few weeks ago (not though a 3rd party, a regular Amazon purchase). When it arrived, the package said it was shipped to me from MovieMars.com, even though I'd never dealt with that company before.
I was able to buy it at my local Best Buy today, although I had to get them to go in the back and find it. They're not good about getting the new stuff out on the shelves right away these days.
Adding to the confusion is the fact the Todd-AO version of OKLAHOMA! was distributed by one company (Magna with Goldwyn doing a reissue in the 1980s) but the 35mm version was distributed by someone else (RKO and then Fox after RKO dissolved, and then Goldwyn?).
But the bottom line is the R&H...
I don't think Goldwyn owns these two titles anymore.
Goldwyn did have them for a while for sure, and the Amazon product listing mentions Goldwyn. But if you look at the 2014 Fox blu-ray R&H box, Goldwyn isn't mentioned there anywhere, nor is it mentioned on the box of the new package if you...
The part I know is the soundtrack rights.
What happened was, in my lay language, in the late fifties R&H formed "Rodgers and Hammerstein Records, Inc." which leased out the rights to the Broadway and soundtrack albums from their shows done from then on. So, record companies competed for the...
No, what happened is the R&H Organization now has the exclusive rights to sell the soundtrack album from the movie. Disney, Fox, RCA, or Sony have nothing to do with those rights now, they belong completely to R&H.
But that doesn't have anything to do with distribution rights to the film...
I think they would have recorded a live track, but only as a guide to what they needed to replace in the final mix. But, you're right, that can't be what's here. It would have lousy-sounding playback of the music. A puzzlement.
What I can tell you, though, is if the tap track is there on the...
I just watched this tonight, and I think the "taps" overdub track is just missing from the audio. It seems to me what you're hearing in "Zing" is just the live audio without the taps. But look at this old clip from YouTube--the taps used to be there!
It seems to me I read most of the dialogue in CAROUSEL and THE KING AND I was looped because the CinemaScope 55 cameras were so noisy. Since there's so much pre-recorded singing in the movies anyway it isn't so noticeable.
That's really true, come to think of it. If you film a chorus line from the front, all you see is mistakes where dancers are out of sync with each other. But if you film from another angle, you don't notice that so much. Heck, a lot of Busby Berkeley shots have dancers faces going by and...
Just watched this today, and I agree it will never look better. The number that really surprised me was “Truthful Parson Brown.” Sure, there's no reason for it in the plot, but it comes across as some seriously good musicians sitting around, playing live, and performing for each other. Really...
Come to think of it, one of the funniest things in this movie is when the black house staff is in the kitchen intelligently assessing the situation, but then when it's time to serve the food, the housekeeper goes out with the tray of fried chicken and immediately starts rolling her eyes and...
Whether it was a good idea or not, the more modern filmmaking touches are intended. There's many things in the script you would have never seen in an older western, like homosexuality and making fun of racial attitudes. Even the artwork on the package, using the graphic from the original...
SONG OF NORWAY really depends on the quality of the presentation, doesn't it? With good visuals and hi-fi music, you can make it through. But can you imagine trying to watch it on TV (before HDTV) in pan and scan mono? Why would you bother? Without a quality presentation, there's very little...
Glad to hear I'm not crazy. It certainly looked and sounded OK, but it wasn't a pristine new transfer at all. Not noticeably better than the DVD of some years back.
Really enjoyed seeing this movie again. Script is just right. Casting is perfect. Effects are still amazing.
If you want to see how much the score adds to the movie, watch the trailer. I don't think that's North's music in the trailer, and without that the movie seems really boring. Add to...