THE SOUND MIX + THE 'JUMP THE WHALE' MEME

Over on answers.com, someone asked about the origin of the phrase "Jump the whale" -- incorrectly attributing it to Peter Lawford's character, when it's actually Walter Pidgeon as Bob Munson who asks, referring to Brig Anderson, "Do you think he'll jump..." I've also seen this odd line mentioned elsewhere. No one can find its derivation (including the answers.com respondent) because I don't think it exists. I've always heard the line differently.

I finally discovered the origin of what is, IMO, a misconception: I re-watched the DVD with the English subtitles turned on, and there it is: "Think he'll jump the whale?" *I STILL think this is a misrendering of the line, and now believe that the writer who prepared the subtitles misheard it.* (I can't believe that on a picture that was already at least 30 years old before the DVD was generated, they'd have worked from a cutting continuity or shooting script.) I believe the actual phrase is "Do you think he'll jump the RAIL?" -- as in go off the track, as when a train jumps off the rails or a race car "jumps the rail" and crashes into the stands.

But the sound cutting, mixing, and re-recording on ADVISE AND CONSENT is not exactly top-drawer and there are many garbled line readings that Preminger didn't bother to loop and/or clean up in Post, which is odd, considering how much "wild sound" he uses to clarify story points (all that o.s. dialogue in the Senate chamber scenes, for example). Interestingly, the captions on the DVD gloss over a few other garbled lines that the caption writer evidently couldn't figure out, either. But, because so much of it is difficult to make out unless you have state-of-the-art stereo on your monitor, the captions ARE helpful. This is especially true with a lot of Laughton's dialogue, which is slurred not only because he's mimicking the line readings delivered by an actual Southern Senator with a mush-mouthed drawl (Laughton persuaded Mississippi Senator John Stennis to read Seab Cooley's dialogue into a tape recorder, so Laughton could mimic the cadences of his speech), but Laughton, who was dying of cancer during the shooting, was allegedly heavily sedated with pain medication.

If you love ADVISE AND CONSENT as much as I do, it's nothing short of a miracle that it's as good as it is considering how difficult to complete it was, according to many accounts, including Preminger's own.