Gypsy

Performer: Original Soundtrack/Bette Midler
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Principal cast: Bette Midler (Rose), Tony Shalhoub (Uncle Jocko), Sean Sullivan (Georgie), Lacey Chabert (Baby June), Elisabeth Moss (Baby Louise), Edward Asner (Pop), Mike Nussbaum (Weber), Peter Riegert (Herbie), Cynthia Gibb (Louise/Gypsy), Joey Ceo, Blake Armstrong, Teo Weiner (newsboys), Jennifer Beck (June), Jeffrey Broadhurst (Tulsa), Peter Lockyer (Yonkers), Michael Moore (L.A.). Patrick Boyd (Kansas). Producers: Arif Mardin, Michael Rafter, Curt Sobel. Engineers: Robert Schaper Jr, David Ronne, Matthew John McFadden, Peggy Names. Recorded at Capitol Studios, Hollywood, California. Includes liner notes by Craig Zadan. All music written by Jule Styne. All lyrics written by Stephen Sondheim. Although the Broadway musical Gypsy was the crowning achievement of Ethel Merman's stage career, Warner Bros. Pictures, contracted to make the film adaptation, did not cast her, a travesty generally credited to Freddie Brisson, manager/husband of Rosalind Russell (and derisively known in the business as "The Lizard of Roz"). Russell had worked in musicals (notably Wonderful Town), but she had a limited vocal range that did not extend to singing songs written for Merman. Of course, that didn't matter in Hollywood, where the singing voices that came out of any number of movie stars didn't belong to them. No surprise, then, that the second lead was given to another nonsinger, Natalie Wood. The principals were replaced, respectively, by nightclub singer Lisa Kirk and Marni Nixon, a professional ghost singer with many previous movie credits (or noncredits, as it were); she had just dubbed Wood in West Side Story. Onscreen, the substitutions, with Russell's and Wood's speaking voices giving way to Kirk's and Nixon's singing voices, could be odd. On the soundtrack album, which has less of the introductory dialogue, this is less of a problem, although the focus on the auditory makes it more obvious, for example, that Russell herself was allowed to sing "Mr. Goldstone, I Love You," while the transition from Russell to Kirk in "Some People" is strange. Kirk does her best to reduce that strangeness, but in doing so she undersings her songs, which is not what you look for in belters like "Everything's Coming Up Roses." (Just to add to the confusion, the weak-voiced Wood, not Nixon, is heard on the soundtrack album; Kirk sings "Together Wherever We Go" alone, instead of the film's trio performance; and "Rose's Turn," a mixture of Kirk and Russell onscreen, also is sung exclusively by Kirk.) As a result, the soundtrack to Gypsy is an unsatisfactory mishmash. ~ William Ruhlmann Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim's score for Gypsy has had five major recordings: the 1959 original Broadway cast album starring Ethel Merman; the 1962 original motion picture soundtrack starring Rosalind Russell, partially dubbed by Lisa Kirk; the 1973 London cast album starring Angela Lansbury; the 1989 Broadway revival cast album starring Tyne Daly; and here, the 1993 television soundtrack starring Bette Midler. The casting of Midler as Rose, the ultimate stage mother, seemed ideal; she is an accomplished actress with a theatrical background and a well-known singer with a feisty personality. The production made a point of sticking to the original show, and the supporting players, Peter Riegert, Cynthia Gibb, and Jennifer Beck (who actually got a fair amount of singing time, along with some others) were excellent. But any production of Gypsy stands or falls on the actress who plays Rose, and Midler turned out to be able to handle some aspects of the part, but not all. As a pop singer, she was too accustomed to being ingratiating and sympathetic to be as much of a monster as Rose is supposed to be, and she didn't quite have the voice for the more demanding songs. On "Small World," "You'll Never Get Away from Me," and "Together, Wherever We Go," songs in which Rose is being as nice as possible, Midler was fine. But in the more confrontational numbers, such as "Some People" and "Everything's Coming Up Roses," she didn't go far enough. You'd have thought that would make Rose's climactic nervous breakdown, "Rose's Turn," beyond Midler, too, but actually she brought that off well, adapting the performance to the small screen. On the whole, then, Midler did a respectable job, but not the one she was capable of, if she had worked harder. As such, this Gypsy, while a vast improvement over the disastrous movie soundtrack, was on a par with the Tyne Daly revival, but not a patch on Angela Lansbury's well-acted version or Ethel Merman's definitive interpretation. ~ William Ruhlmann

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