# Recasting the movie without star of the stage version **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 18, 2017, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recasting-the-movie-without-star-of-the-stage-version/784681 "2017-04-18T00:57:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2017, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recasting-the-movie-without-star-of-the-stage-version/784681/41 "2017-07-21T23:08:10Z")
[QUOTE=Roderick Femm;20360237 By the way, I thought the movie Mary Poppins was a horrible saccharine mess and she was nothing much to write home about in it.[/QUOTE] Anyone who read the books agrees, bur Julie Andrews did a fine job of playing the role as written. > [@RealityChuck](#): > > Why the producers of the movie version of _Mame_ went with Lucille Ball over Angela Lanbury is hard to explain. Ball was the bigger name at the time, but only as a TV actress, and Lansbury had a track record as a movie actress – including a couple of Oscar nominations – plus had won a Tony for the role. Lucille Ball couldn’t sing, and even said so in interviews. When she did interviews for _Mame_, she was weirdly “Gee, shucks, I don’t know why they cast me.” My mother saw Lansbury on stage in _Mame_ and said she was brilliant. I was in utero at the time, but I did once see a video of Lansbury and Bea Arthur doing “Bosum Buddies,” and it was great. Apparently they remained friends after doing the show together. ---
**Author:** ![Patx2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/73ab20/32.png) [@Patx2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patx2)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2017, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recasting-the-movie-without-star-of-the-stage-version/784681/42 "2017-07-22T15:27:38Z")
We watched Grease last night and once again we were all commenting on how none of them look even remotely close to high school age. I never saw the stage show, was that true also? ---
**Author:** ![Patx2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/73ab20/32.png) [@Patx2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patx2)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2017, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recasting-the-movie-without-star-of-the-stage-version/784681/43 "2017-07-22T15:31:14Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > I actually think that the logical romance in MFL is between Eliza and Colonel Pickering. He’s the only one who treats her like a human being from the start. If you cast a younger actor in the role, it would work just fine. > > Why the producers of the movie version of _Mame_ went with Lucille Ball over Angela Lanbury is hard to explain. Ball was the bigger name at the time, but only as a TV actress, and Lansbury had a track record as a movie actress – including a couple of Oscar nominations – plus had won a Tony for the role. Interesting because my daughter had to write a paper recently for school. She had to write an Act 6 for Pygmalion explaining who, if anyone Eliza should end up with. We were talking about it, and my first choice was Pickering for the reasons you said. I do think he was more like a father to her though. Anyway, in the paper my daughter left her single. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2017, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recasting-the-movie-without-star-of-the-stage-version/784681/44 "2017-07-22T22:10:24Z")
> [@Patx2](#): > > We watched Grease last night and once again we were all commenting on how none of them look even remotely close to high school age. I never saw the stage show, was that true also? Barry Bostwick was 27 when he originated the role of Danny Zuko in the Broadway production of Grease. Leslie Goto, who played Sandy, was a year or two younger. The good thing about stage performances is that they don’t have close-ups. Mary Martin was 41 when she played Peter Pan and 46 when she played Maria in Sound of Music. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2017, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recasting-the-movie-without-star-of-the-stage-version/784681/45 "2017-07-22T22:40:01Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > It was probably impossible to get Patti LuPone to do Evita in the film, but I really wish they hadn’t made it a Madonna vehicle. Despite the real-life parallels in their lives, I thought Madonna really lowered the quality of the movie. (Actually, that’s probably the source of my problems with her. It’s now _Madonna_, not _Evita_.) It’s not a horrible movie, but it could have been better with someone else. I’m not a Madonna fan at all, or much of a music fan for that matter, but _Evita_ actually kind of made me respect her as an artist rather than some girly-girl. I’d only ever seen it on stage once at that point. I know it was Detroit, so probably the late 1980’s when I was still too young to appreciate it? It would have not been Patti Lupone, though. I hesitate to think I wouldn’t appreciate it as a late teenager, though, as I also loved Phantom (Toronto) at that age, and others. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2017, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recasting-the-movie-without-star-of-the-stage-version/784681/46 "2017-07-22T22:58:07Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > My mother saw Lansbury on stage in _Mame_ and said she was brilliant. I was in utero at the time So you got in free but your view was obstructed. ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2017, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recasting-the-movie-without-star-of-the-stage-version/784681/47 "2017-07-23T01:39:06Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > **Anyone who read the books agrees** , bur Julie Andrews did a fine job of playing the role as written. > > Lucille Ball couldn’t sing, and even said so in interviews. When she did interviews for _Mame_, she was weirdly “Gee, shucks, I don’t know why they cast me.” > > My mother saw Lansbury on stage in _Mame_ and said she was brilliant. I was in utero at the time, but I did once see a video of Lansbury and Bea Arthur doing “Bosum Buddies,” and it was great. Apparently they remained friends after doing the show together. Bolding mine. Well, no, not “anyone.” The movie is certainly kinder and gentler than the books, where Mary Poppins is a remarkably stern martinet whose affection for the Banks children is a lot better disguised than in the movie. (OTOH, British nannies in that era were not paid based on affection; if anything, the opposite.) But if “saccharine” might describe the movie, “mess” does not, at least not in comparison to the novels. I am an “anyone” who likes the movie a great deal better than the books:). The original Mary Poppins book isn’t bad, but it’s very uneven. Some of the adventures and characters are creative, fanciful, and exciting, and some are just…not. When I was a fulltime elementary school teacher I read the book aloud to a class one year. It was not a success. Part of it was the characterization of Poppins herself, which they found very off-putting–as one kid said, “She’s so MEAN!” But they also just didn’t find the adventures especially intriguing. Even the chapters I rather liked fell flat. “Would not use as a read-aloud again” (The Britishness of the book may have played a role, though I’m pretty sure I read some Roald Dahl that year, and kids always loved his stuff; the age of the books probably didn;t make a difference, as that class loved the more ancient Wizard of Oz.) And about the Mary Poppins sequels, the less said, the better. –About Angela Lansbury: at the age of about six, my daughter, who we adopted a little over 30 years ago, used to imagine that Lansbury was her biological mother. She had seen a few exrpts of _Murder, She Wrote_, and she knew that Lansbury was the voice of Mrs. Potts in _Beauty and the Beast_. She knew, mostly, that it wasn’t true, but it was very sweet. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recasting-the-movie-without-star-of-the-stage-version/784681.md?page=2)