From a post on tcm.com, quoting from Gale's autobiography, published in 1981...
Actress Gale Storm was always sorry that Frank Capra hadn't been the one to direct It Happened on Fifth Avenue. The material was decidedly "Capra-esque" - a warmhearted human story about the "little guy" with underlying social and political commentary -- and would have suited his trademark directing style well. Director Roy Del Ruth, she felt, didn't make the most of the story's potential. Storm was also upset with Del Ruth because he wouldn't allow her, a trained singer, to perform her own songs in the film. "I had two songs to do, and I was very excited," said Storm in her autobiography. "I'd done songs in other movies, but they were low-budget productions. The sky was the limit in this one, and I figured my numbers would have high values."
Storm began rehearsing for the songs immediately, only to be told a short time later that she would be lip-synching to someone else's voice. "I couldn't believe it," she said. "I thought that maybe the director didn't know I'd been singing and dancing in films, and that if I spoke to him he'd let me do my own numbers. Well, I asked him, and he said no. I asked him to look at some of my musicals, and he said no. I asked him if I could sing for him, and he said no. His theory was that if you were a dancer, you didn't sing; if you were a singer, you didn't dance; and if you were an actor, you didn't sing or dance. It was humiliating."
I guess the closed-minded fool had never heard of or seen folks like Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney, Shirley Temple, Ann Miller, or any of the other HUNDREDS of film stars who were all quite adept and absolutely wonderful doing all three of those things, and usually all together in the same film at the same time! What an amazing clod! His humiliations didn't stop with Gale, either. According to her autobiography, he continually persisted in embarrassing Victor Moore as well, by making constant demands for him to repeat take after take without even having the courtesy of telling the lovely old gentleman what it was he had supposedly done wrong. From the sound of things, I think he was just a tyrannical, contemptible old Scrooge who got his jollies by making other people upset, embarrassed and miserable.
reply
share