TMS Spotlight: The Relevance of Vocal Dubbing in Movie Musicals

(Walt Disney Studios)

NOTE: This article was originally written for The Times of San Diego in 2017

A lot was said about Bill Condon’s 2017 interpretation of Beauty and the Beast, which is essentially just a live-action remake of Disney’s 1991 animated masterpiece. Like all remakes of beloved films, it had a polarizing reaction. Of course the fans of the original are the harshest critics, and there are high standards and nit-picking. Rather than dive into many of my own issues with the film, I’m going to focus on one particular problem: the limited singing skills of Emma Watson.

Back in the old Hollywood days—when movie musicals were a common genre—if you were cast in a musical, you either sang your own vocals, or were dubbed by uncredited trained vocalists if your singing wasn’t considered up to par. This was because [as has always been the case in the film industry] the studios need big names to sell the musical, and not all movie stars have Broadway levels of talent. Roughly 80% of Jerome Robbins & Robert Wise’s West Side Story (1961) had trained vocalists ghost dubbing the cast, including lead actors Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood. [Ironic compared to Steven Spielberg’s recent adaptation of WSS (2021), where everyone hired on screen supplied their own singing.] Even experienced musical performers sometimes had to deal with dubbing, as was the case with Debbie Reynolds on the song ‘Would You?’ in Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Female vocalist Marni Nixon was the queen of ghost dubbing in the mid-20th century, providing singing efforts for stars like Natalie, Audrey Hepburn, Margaret O’Brien and Deborah Kerr. Bill Lee would be the male equivalent, dubbing for Ricardo Montalban, Christopher Plummer, John Gavin, Ben Wright and so on. Lea Salonga became the quintessential voice of the Disney princess by providing the singing skills for Jasmine in Aladdin (1992) and the title character of Mulan (1998).

Over the years though, when the rare movie musical is produced, studios have gone through the effort to provide vocal lessons if needed. Sometimes the movie stars luck out, as was the case with Ewan McGregor in Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine (1998) and Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! (2001), Renée Zellweger in Rob Marshall’s Chicago (2002) and Emma Stone in Damien Chazelle’s La La Land (2016). The last time I can think of a live-action musical featuring dubbing is Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You (1996), where Drew Barrymore insisted she couldn’t sing and was ultimately dubbed by a girl named Olivia Hayman. Music biopics are a whole different league, since viewers are obviously fine with actors miming to the real musician’s original recordings. Though occasionally you do get the stars having a go at the famous songs.

With Beauty and the Beast (2017), I knew immediately something was off when the musical numbers were barely featured in the trailers and TV spots. Especially the lead actress. And now we know why: she can’t sing. Or, she can, at a very, very limited range. In 1994, Cameron Diaz made her film debut in the comedy Chuck Russell’s The Mask, where she played a lounge singer and had dubbed vocals on her songs. Flash forward two decades later when she’s cast as Ms. Hannigan in Will Gluck’s Annie (2014), and something’s…different. She’s using her own singing vocals this time, but with what sounds like could possibly be the aid of autotune. A feature that can be a neat gimmick in songs on the top 40, but everywhere else, and especially musicals, should be nonexistent.

Many have speculated if Emma Watson got a share of her own autotune as Belle in Beauty and the Beast, and it certainly sounds like it. There is no drive, no emotion, no range. Paige O’Hara had it all when she was hired in 1987 for the animated movie, as she was professional musical theatre actress. She helped bring Belle to life with natural charm and heart through her voice, that was absent from the later adaptation. Maybe Disney paid attention to the criticism of Russell Crowe’s rock vocals being out of place in the otherwise musically talented cast of Tom Hooper’s Les misérables (2012), and thought they could fix the possible issue digitally. But unfortunately audiences can still tell the difference.

Which leads me to thinking something I never thought I’d say: ghost dubbing might need to make a comeback. Studios are always going to cast lead actors based on the name over the talent. That’s how Emma was cast in the first place, thanks to her already built fanbase from Harry Potter. No one stopped watching West Side Story ’61 or George Cukor’s My Fair Lady (1964) when they found out the movies had dubs, and I doubt people would with new musicals. So until we get a couple more Broadway/musical theatre actors who can successfully crossover into lead film roles, it might be best to consider the old fashioned alternative.