I’m sure this question is completely out of left field, but the dope is the best place to get answers to these questions, so here goes.
Thanksgiving morning, a movie called Mogambo was on television. I’d never heard of it before, but it starred Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, and Grace Kelly, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
Early in the movie, Gable is in the African jungle, in a permanent shelter with Garder, when a large snake appears. Gardner freaks, but Gable soothes her by saying “that’s Old Joe”. Old Joe, it’s explained, takes care of the rodents in the hut, so he’s a welcome guest.
The weird thing (and the question) about this is that “Old Joe” is clearly dubbed in. “Old Joe” was mentioned 4-5 times, and each time, you could see the actors lips mouthing something else, but “Old Joe” comes out of the actors mouths.
My question is, what in the world could have been so controversial about the original snake’s name (if that’s what is dubbed out) to cause it to be replaced by the phrase “Old Joe”?
I did a search for the screen play and could not find it. No mention of it on the IMDB page.
Has anyone else seen the movie, noticed the dubbing, and know what it was that was dubbed out? And most important, why?
I vaguely remember seeing the movie in college, and don’t remember anything odd about “Old Joe.” Neither Wiki nor IMDb.com have anything about the snake’s name being later changed.
Sorry, don’t remember; saw it a few years ago (two or three). Grace Kelly was just made of woman parts all through the flick, though – and this is acting with Ava fucking Gardner.
Here is the scene on YouTube. It does sound dubbed, but their voices for the entire scene sound that way to me so it they may have just done a voice over for the scene, maybe even using different actor’s voices.
The real name is probably either sexual or religious, I feel certain. One way to tell would be if someone can read lips. So I tried it, on the clip above. I made it run full screen and set the playback speed to 50%, and at least twice you can see Ava’s lips clearly when she says the name. To me it looks like “Old Jack” but I don’t know what would be offensive enough about that to change it.
FWIW, Scripts .com has the Mogambo screenplay, and the snake’s name is Joe. Not that it matters much, but he word “old” is used adjectivally, never capitalized, so not part of the name.
But I can’t tell if that’s the original text, or a transcription from a later viewing.
Has anyone else watched and listened to this scene?
I can’t be sure, but I really do think the entire scene was redubbed after filming and it’s not just the snake’s name that sounds off. The most likely reason for this was the original audio was poorly recorded. There still could have been changes to any part of the original dialogue, however, if the whole scene was redubbed I doubt they’d do all that just to change the snake’s name.
The shape of her mouth makes me think it’s a vowel sound like ee or ay (as in fee or pay), and I think I see her making a th sound, so maybe it’s something similar to “teeth” or “faith.”
I did find this under “goofs” in the IMDB listing:
A great deal of the dialogue was looped in and not in the best of settings. A common issue with this film is that louder bits of dialogue generate a noticeable amount of natural reverb, which would not be present in settings like tents.
This was because a lot of the film was shot in the studio rather than on location. This dialog doesn’t seem particularly loud to me, but it could be the case. That doesn’t explain the obvious change in the snake’s name, whatever the online script says.