A lot of the folks I’d mention have already been brought up. JIm Nabors has a surprisingly good voice. James Coco did a far better job in Man of La Mancha that I’d have expected. Heck, Sean Connery did better singing in Dr. No than I’d expect.
It’s off-topic, I know, but this isn’t true. Yosemite Sam was invented by Friz Freleng, who wanted his own foil for Bugs. Yosemite first appeared in the 1940s, when Bryant was still alive and kicking. After Bryant died, Mel Blanc did take over the voice. There have been plenty of Elmer Fud cartoons since then.
I hate myself for remembering this, but John Schneider actually had a brief radio hit in the early 80s with a cover of Elvis’s “It’s Now or Never” (which was itself a rewrite of the Italian “O Sole Mio”).
Also in The Blues Brothers 2000. It is worth watching just for his singing. He also sang occasionnally while on *RoseAnne[/ii]. I especially remember fondly his rap version of The Beverly Hillbillies theme song.o
Ha! And Jessica Lange sounded JUST LIKE Patsy Cline!
In those cases it’s good that the original voices were used, but I didn’t mind at all Sissy Spacek singing Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter. I thought she did a great job! Beverly D’Angelo was pretty good as Patsy too. I was pulling for her to get the lead in a Patsy Cline story, and would have been pretty depressed about the whole thing if Lange hadn’t been so brilliant in the role.
I just put Sweeney Todd into the computer… and happened to glance at the artist column, and there was Victor Garber.
And while I knew about Godspell, I hadn’t really thought about it - and it’s hard to reconcile the guy singing “Johanna” with the guy who I watch blow things up and shoot people on Sunday nights.
Lucy Lawless actually trained to be an opera singer early on, but decided against it as a career and went into acting instead. IIRC, she stated that she just felt that she didn’t have enough love/passion for it to make it her life.
Katey Sagal of Married with Children and Futurama started out as a singer, and toured as backup for some well known stars prior to her TV career. She also released an album during the Married years, which pretty much went nowhere. She has a good voice, though.
I own this. Spiner’s a tad wobbly but still an entertaining singer (and it’s worth owning just for “It’s a Sin To Tell a Lie” with Frakes, Dorn, Burton and Stewart on backing vocals).
Spiner was much better in Sunday in the Park With George; the same production (which was televised) also featured Charles Kimbrough, who is better known as stuffy newreader Jim Dial in Murphy Brown.
And John Cullum (Holling from Northern Exposure and Mark Green’s father in ER) was in Camelot, and has quite a good voice.
Another unusual singing-actor appearance: Jack Nicholson in the movie version of Tommy, doing a lead in (a heavily modified version of) “Go to the Mirror” . Only that in this case, it’s NOT a pleasant surprise…
In a sitcom a few years go there was an older character actor named Jon Cypher that played the somewhat clueless Maj. Gen. Marcus Craig. There was some talent show thing and everyone was trying to discourage him from entering (I guess because they thought he would be terrible) and the end is this scene where he belts out the most incredible version of “To dream the impossible dream”, and this guy had to be in his 60’s.
Trivia: Pete Townshend has said that he lost the battle to keep Nicholson out of the movie, and that Nicholson has probably never forgiven him for all the cracks about his poor singing voice. But IMHO, ol’ Jack was the least of the problems with the singing in that film. I mean, Oliver Reed! Oy vey.
On the subject of Nicole Kidman, I thought her voice was perfectly pleasant in Moulin Rouge!, just rather weak. You could tell they had to crank her mic to keep her from being overwhelmed by Ewan McGregor, who has theatrical training. Then again, Kidman was playing a consumptive, so how strong could her character’s voice be?
Even though I knew Jack Black as a member of Tenacious D before I’d ever seen him act, I was still surprised when he sang in High Fidelity. Everything sign points to his character being horrible, but he belts out a fine version of “Let’s Get it On”.
My favorite thing Lucy Lawless has ever done is when she hosted SNL. She was great in the whole thing, but her best sketch was when she did an ad for Stevie Nicks’ Tex-Mex restaurant. The sketch was funny on the whole, but she did a dead-on impression of Nicks, and I figure you have to be a good singer before you can start being a parody singer. After that episode, my opinion of Lawless shot up 10,000%. (So why is she on crap like “Tarzan”?!?)
And she sings quite poorly, too! (It’s not horrible, I guess, but it’s all whispery and shaky, the voice of someone who’s being forced to sing against her will.) I own this album. You’d think that a Dukes of Hazzard soundtrack would be fun, but it’s really just sad and depressing. Especially Roscoe P. Coltrain’s song to his dog Flash, the heart-rending and stomach-churning “Go Flash Go.”
It’s pretty funny on their new Live concert DVD, Dan Tyminsky tells a story where he explains the concept of a “voice-over” to his wife: “You see, it’s going to be my voice coming out of George Clooney’s face.” “… Dan, that’s my fantasy!”
As the old joke goes:
How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Practice, practice, practice.
Most actors have the advantage of having a voice coach. Surprisingly, unless you are tone-deaf, most people can actually be taught to carry a tune, and some can actually do far better than that.
Hell, if a woman like Bea Arthur, with a speaking voice like hers, can not only carry a tune, she can belt out a number like you can’t believe…well, anybody can do it.
Actually, the first thing I ever saw Garber in (or the first time I noticed him) was the Broadway production of Damn Yankees. He sang great, especially considering he had to hold his own opposite Bebe Neuwirth. I’m surprised no one has mentioned her yet!!! I guess it’s pretty widespread knowledge now that she is a Broasway Ass-Kicker (The Best Velma Kelly), but if you still only know her as Lillith from Cheers you’ll be extremely surprised if you ever get a chance to see her strut her stuff.
With all the comments that have been made about Chicago I’d like to add that I was pretty disappointed that they didn’t make better use of Christine Baranski. The only real singer in the cast other than Queen Latifah and they went and cut (!) her character’s song!
If they movie musical is indeed coming back, I’d like to see Jane Krakowski get a chance to do something pretty cool (I would have loved to have seen her in place of Rene Zellwegger in Chicago).
Katey Sagal of “Married with Children” (mentioned above) was one of Bette Midler’s Harlettes.
Gloria Ruben quit “ER” to go on tour as one of Tina Turner’s backup singers.
Damn. I was going to mention Andre Braugher’s duet of “Try a Little Tenderness” with Paul Giamatti in “Duets,” but it turns out his voice was dubbed by Arnold McCuller (link), whoever he is. Another illusion shattered.
Christopher Lee was supposedly up for the role as The Doctor (taken by Jack Nicholson) in TOMMY but declined due to taking (I think) THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN. I didn’t think Nicholson did that badly.
Anthony Stewart Head also played Jesus on stage in GODSPELL and, brace yourselves, Frank-N-Furter in ROCKY HORROR (a friend sent me pics of the latter- the horror! the horror!)
I was gonna mention the Lucy Lawless-Stevie Nicks SNL parody!
I was blown away by Val Kilmer’s work as Jim Morrison. Not only did he sing like him, he looked like him, and apparently they were almost identical body doubles - so much so that the custom-fitted leather pants that Morrison owned were worn by Kilmer in the movie, and fit him perfectly. It’s an eerie performance.
Ohhhhh…John Cullum. Forget Camelot, you should hear him in Shenandoah. He’s the best thing about the show, and the way he sings is the way a musical theatre baritone is meant to sound. He does the almost impossible and improves on the stage performance & original actor in the movie version of 1776. He’s won two best actor tonys, been nominated for a third, and I am deeply in love with him. What’s a 47 year age difference anyway?
