Mamma Mia! (photo by peter mountain)

The Six Pack

Six movie musicals starring nonsinging actors.

by Matt Prigge

Guys and Dolls (1955): At the height of the Method acting craze, producers scooped up Marlon Brando to play Sky Masterson. So, how’d that work out? Brando mumbles through his songs while barely raising his voice, turning in one of those withdrawn performances he would do when feeling miscast. (See also: Charlie Chaplin’s A Countess From Hong Kong.) Luckily Frank Sinatra, Vivian Blaine and Stubby Kaye were on hand to compensate.

Camelot (1967): When Lerner and Lowe’s King Arthur show debuted on Broadway, it went with name over vocal power, casting nonsinger Richard Burton. The great ham didn’t return for the movie, but the trend carried over with Richard Harris, who simply pulls a Rex Harrison and speaks his songs in an awkward exaggerated lilt. As his Guenevere, Vanessa Redgrave tries hard, even if all she can muster is a breathy drawl that makes Marilyn Monroe sound like Ethel Merman.

Paint Your Wagon (1969): Right as the counterculture invaded Hollywood, Clint Eastwood and a never-grizzlier Lee Marvin helped assassinate one of its prize stallions: the bloated, big-budget, multihour musical. Good job, guys.

At Long Last Love (1975): America’s torrid love affair with Peter Bogdanovich violently ended with this painstaking and borderline alienating imitation of ’30s-era Ernst Lubitsch, which goes so far as to bring back the old “direct sound” technique—recording the singing live, often in one nimble take. Burt Reynolds, Cybill Shepherd and Madeleine Kahn do some awful things to Cole Porter, but, like Ishtar, this is one of those megabombs whose overblown infamy is perpetuated by smirking morons like Michael Medved and those who’ve never seen it.

Sweeney Todd (2007): I hear they use Helena Bonham Carter’s evisceration of “Worst Pies in London” at Gitmo.

Mamma Mia! (2008): Meryl Streep belted at the end of Postcards From the Edge, and heck, she even tends to speak in a cascading, sing-songy way. If only she wasn’t doing up fucking ABBA.