Gypsy [Blu-ray]

ROSALIND RUSSELL SUPERB AS "MAMA ROSE"!
When Warner Bros purchased the rights to the 1959 musical hit GYPSY it was intended to make a purely dramatic film, with songs from the Jule Styne & Stephen Sondheim Broadway score confined to the theatrical sequences. Rosalind Russell was chosen for the starring (but non-musical) role of Mama Rose along side Natalie Wood as Gypsy Rose Lee. However just as this version of GYPSY began filming, THE MUSIC MAN opened in theatres and scored a huge hit. It was then decided that GYPSY should be filmed as a musical follow-up to THE MUSIC MAN. The production closed down and was revamped as a musical. Rosalind Russell could sing but not in the style her role demanded (all of Mama Rose's songs in the Broadway production were written in the original Mama Rose, Ethel Merman's vocal style). It was decided to bring in singer Lisa Kirk to assist Russell with the vocals rather than re-cast the role. The end result fully justifies this decision because Rosalind Russell's Mama Rose is simply...

The Wallflower Blooms
Based on the hit Broadway play, Mervyn LeRoy directed this under-appreciated musical gem. Rosalind Russell is Mama Rose, the mother of all stage mothers, grooming her two young daughters for stardom on the vaudeville stage. She pays special attention to her youngest child, blond Baby June, while Louise is relegated to the background. As time goes on, the vaudeville craze fades with the coming of talkie films, and now her bubbly blond darling, Danity June (Ann Jilliann), is desperate to break free, deserting the family act. Rose is forced to start from scratch, with wallflower Louise (Natalie Wood, who was always in her sister's shadow), as the headliner in a new act, which basically goes nowhere. One day, Rose and her troop, now called Rose Louise and her Hollywood Blondes, wind up in a burlesque theater, and young Louise finds herself drawn into the the role of a stripper. She sheds her shy persona and becomes the world's most famous stripper, Gypsy Rose Lee.

Ethel Merman...

Everything's Coming Up Roz
Some spend the winter hibernating. I spend it hibernating AND watching musicals. This past winter in the Northeast wasn't quite as severe as some we've seen, but it was LOOOONG. The winter that wouldn't die. So I needed a goodly supply of classic musicals on hand.

What a treat it was to re-watch GYPSY after lo these umpteen years. Rosalind Russell's Rose is a study in great force-of-nature type acting. As it happens, hers is the only Rose I've ever seen, so I cannot really get into the who-was-better argument with any real authority. But it's hard to imagine that Merman could have played this archetypical stage monster, uh, mother with more authority on the big screen. My guess is that those who maintain that Russell brings subtlety to the character that Merman could not have are right. Merman may have been great on stage, where bigger is better (voice, manner, gesture and all out pizzazz), but what works wonderfully on stage may be deadly on screen (and vice...

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