Gigi - Leslie Caron 's own voice - Say a Prayer for Me Tonight

This audio track is slightly slowed. For the exact speed, click: http://vimeo.com/14349163
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From Leslie's autobiography, "Thank Heaven":

As I was walking the streets of MGM, I met Andre Previn...who stopped me in my tracks. "I think perhaps you haven't been told...your voice has been dubbed?" "What?!" I was dumbfounded. "No! Of course I wasn't told. Are you sure?" "Alan Jay Lerner and Arthur Freed want to release the record before the film opens. They feel your voice isn't professional enough. You've been dubbed by Betty Wand, who imitates your French accent." I was destroyed by this piece of news. It was true that I didn't have a trained voice, but my pitch was very true, and I had worked hard at improving my control in "Say A Prayer For Me Tonight." My straightforward boyish harshness in "I Don't Understand the Parisians" and "The Night They Invented Champagne" was intended to show a girl in adolescence - a little tomboy. To her, Gaston is just a buddy, just as he hasn't realized yet that Gigi is becoming a young woman. This lack of sexuality in the voice is essential to the believability of the film. To this day, the childish cuteness of Ms. Wand and her artificial French accent hurt my ears. The filming of the musical numbers (always done on prerecordings) had been done on my voice, and it didn't occur to me that Freed might dub me. (Now, fifty years later, MGM has inserted my voice on the DVD - wicked, is what I say!) [Only a short section of this song is included in the "Making of" feature on the new DVD, with piano only.]

In shock, I went straight to Arthur Freed's office and asked to see him. His faithful secretary let me in. "Arthur!" I started, rather worked up. Arthur said, "Sit down." I sat and started again, full throttle. "I've just met Andre. He tells me that I've been dubbed. That's not rue, is it? You can't have done that without telling me...without giving me a second chance!"

Arthur stood up, lifted his finger, and said, "Just a minute." He walked around his desk and out the door. After about ten minutes alone in the room, I got up from my chair and walked to his secretary's office.

"Margie? Where is Arthur?"

"Oh, Miss Caron," she said, very surprised, "didn't he tell you? He went home about ten minutes ago." There was no catching him in a confrontation.

When I want to be angry with Arthur, I remind myself that he is the one who invited me to Hollywood and also he is the genius who came up with the title "My Fair Lady" for a musical version of a play by George Bernard Shaw that wouldn't have done half so well had it still been called "Pygmalion."
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"The cat reacted violently whenever it was in a scene with Leslie Caron, but director Vincente Minnelli insisted on having that particular cat, so it had to be heavily drugged. This is especially obvious during "Say a Prayer for Me Tonight."
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Category:

Film & Animation

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• Louis
• Jourdan
• Vincente
• Minnelli
• Alan
• Jay
• Lerner
• outtake
• MGM
• musical
• Betty
• Wand
• Frederick
• Loewe
• deleted
• scene
• Deleted Scene