NitrateVille.com

FrankFay wrote: Age and weight were not his best friends.

Nor mine, those rats. (Anybody looking for some size 40 jackets...that I can no longer squeeze into?)

Here he is in superb form:

I was looking for information about the Vitaphone opera shorts (search topic on this website for this important project), found the thread about Lawrence Tibbett and joined Nitrateville just for the purpose of contributing . . .

Just because Tibbett had problems with alcoholism doesn't mean opera fans are ashamed of him. Maria Callas had a very messy life (which included spending the last ten years of her life being unable to produce any attractive sounds whatever with her voice, but continuing to try to do so in concert halls in front of audiences that continued to come to see her out of loyalty, but found listening to her sing to be very painful) and she's revered as a goddess! No, I think the problem is that opera fans, except for a peculiar breed (to which I belong), tend to have rather short memories for great opera stars. Off the top of my head I could name twenty-five opera stars of the 1930s who were hugely successful in their day (Aureliano Pertile, anyone?) but whom most modern-day opera fans have never heard of. I listen to the Met Opera radio broadcasts and laugh at the people who appear during intermission and imagine themselves to be experts on the history of opera performance, but can't even pronounce the name of Conchita Supervia, for instance, and have a very misguided idea of who she was or what she did. I have adored Tibbett my whole life, since having heard 78 rpm recordings of his voice when I was 10 years old. But, in terms of his legacy, Tibbett is very lucky to have made movies as there are more fans of old movies than fans of old opera recordings.

As for Tibbett's opera recordings, try the recording of Verdi's "Otello" with Giuseppe Martinelli (who appeared in some of the Vitaphone opera shorts I'm interested in). It's from a radio broadcast and the sound is scratchy, but I guarantee that you wouldn't worry about having "wasted" two hours of your life . . .

I don't believe opera fans are "ashamed" of Tibbett. My point was that the Met seems to be - whenever it does a retrospective, ol' Larry gets short shrift or so it seems to me. Re Verdi's OTELLO and the Martinelli-Tibbett tag team, there are actually three performances that have been preserved. Chronologically, the first I believe is a series of commercial 78s made for Victor or Columbia (I'm 62 so I'm allowed to forget which) and is available on CD. Of course, these sides are not the complete opera but are the big moments. The second performance is probably the one referred to above, the 1938 Met broadcast of the complete opera. That too is out on CD. Then there is the 1940 Met broadcast of another complete performance with Tibbett and Martinelli. But oh, the differences between them! Sonically, the commercial sides are superior and the boys are in fine voice. The general criticism of the 78s is that being studio recordings the boys lack the fire they deliver in a live performance. Now don't quote me because I think they sound terrific and fully engaged.

The 1938 broadcast has the virtue of being a live performance in front of a packed house at the Met. Sonically, it's not as good as the studio discs but it's plenty good on its own terms if a bit scratchy at times, as noted previously. Tibbett is in fine voice and Martinelli, for 53 year-old singer, is very good but the voice is a bit weathered (not unsurprisingly). Then there's the 1940 broadcast that offers better sonics than the 1938 broadcast but both voices have deteriorated. Martinelli is 55 so allowances can be made but Tibbett is only 43 and has already begun his premature vocal decline.

Tibbett fans might seek out his biography, DEAR ROGUE - or maybe not. It was written with the cooperation of Tibbett's sons but it should contain a warning like a pack of cigarettes. The authors obviously love Tibbett and admire his talent, but the tale they relate literally drove me into a depression. Be warned - this book may be hazardous to your mental health!

Just a couple more comments--yes, I have read "Dear Rogue" which has that awful mug shot of Tibbett when he was picked up for drunk driving in the 1950s, but also a photo of Tibbett fit and healthy, in his 20s, and . . . wait for it . . . in the nude . . . though the photo is a discreet rear shot, from a distance! And Martinelli is widely suspected to have knocked ten years off his age, so what you think is the voice of a man in his 50s is probably that of a man in his 60s. Male singers last longer than female ones do, but even a male singer has to take very good care of his voice for it to have lasted as long as Martinelli's did, and I freely admit that Tibbett did not do that--either took care of his voice or lasted as long. But bless 'em both!

buddhawannabe wrote: No, I think the problem is that opera fans, except for a peculiar breed (to which I belong), tend to have rather short memories for great opera stars. Off the top of my head I could name twenty-five opera stars of the 1930s who were hugely successful in their day (Aureliano Pertile, anyone?) but whom most modern-day opera fans have never heard of.

Unfortunate (but not too terribly surprising) those so-called fans won't take the trouble to purchase--for next to nothing!--a few editions of The Victrola Book of the Opera: wonderful photos & stories of the greatest stars between the turn of the century and the '30s.

It only took listening to today's Met broadcast to remember fondly how masterful Tibbett's Iago is in the 1939 studio recording with Martinelli. I'm going to have to look up those live broadcasts!

greta

Watched Under Your Spell last night, Tibbett's final film appearance. This is a 1936 film for 20th Century Fox and seems oddly rushed at 62 minutes. Was it cut to shreds as was his previous film, Metropolitan, which reportedly had 20-30 minutes deleted?

Tibbett is in fine voice, sings a bit from Faust as well as the title tune, "Amigo," and "My Little Mule Wagon." Plot has him as a runaway opera star, tired of the whirl of his career. He goes back to an orphanage in New Mexico where he was raised (not much done with this subsplot). He is pursued by pushy heiress Wendy Barrie who bet a pesky count she could get Tibbett to sing at her party. If she loses, she'll marry the count. So the role reversal has Barrie chasing Tibbett across country, coming upon him naked, bathing in a watering hole (and singing). Plot moves along until he finds out he was the subject of a bet and throws a hissy. The final courtroom scene is pretty good. Gregory Ratoff is the manager, Arthur Treacher the valet, and Nora Cecil has a nice bit at the orphanage.

Tibbett never made another film. He was 40ish here and still in good voice. He wasn't limited to opera and could belt out pop tunes with the best of them. So 4 films for MGM 1930-31 (and an Oscar nomination), then 2 for 20th Century Fox in 1935 and 36. Did he not want to make films? Or were these last 2 major box-office bombs?

Maybe the whole genre of putting opera stars into movies was wearing out. Studios would still continue to do it, but not as much as in the 1930's.

Also, the only real opera stars in the U.S. were those who sang at the Metropolitan, and when Rudolf Bing became director of that house, he lowered the boom on his stars moonlighting in Hollywood--he felt (with some reason) that they became over-committed, though you would think that a movie career would have helped add cachet. Rise Stevens was, I think, the last Met opera star with any career in Hollywood though Marilyn Horne dubbed Dorothy Dandridge in "Carmen Jones" and then there's Luciano Pavarotti in "Si, Giorgio"!?!? not a "Hollywood" film, of course. Incidentally after lampooning misinformed operaphiles I myself mistakenly referred to Giuseppe Martinelli, should be Giovanni, of course! "Nobody's perfect"--Joe E. Brown

There was Lauritz Melchior in the 40's, but by the time Bing came along he was all but retired.

I think that by the 50's opera stars weren't quite the public luminaries they were at the turn of the century. I think many of the popular ones were the ones with "Regular Fella" images, like Beverley Sills, Jan Peerce & Robert Merrill. They were more likely to walk across town to a TV studio than across the country to Hollywood.

Helen Traubel, John Charles Thomas, and Dorothy Kirsten made a lot of radio and TV appearances in the late 40s and early 50s. Jack Benny said that the longest sustained laugh he ever got (I thought it was for the "Your money or your life" encounter) was when Dorothy Kirsten guested and she and Don Wilson engaged in a serious discussion of opera. I've heard it and there's no point in trying to relate it - you just have to hear it and it is VERY funny.

I discover that Lauritz Melchior did indeed make his Hollywood movies starting in 1945, while he was still at the Met but towards the end of his singing career (and before Rudolf Bing started there as general manager). Rise Stevens made her couple of Hollywood movies in the early 1940s, even before Melchior's, but she did so at a much younger age than Melchior--it somehow doesn't seem right to me that Stevens' movies should be earlier than Melchior's as she was of a later generation of singers, but there you are. Helen Traubel, who sang with Melchior at the Met, did make a couple of Hollywood movies--one with Jerry Lewis, of all people--but only after she left the Met (at Bing's insistence).

Yes, I think you're right that by the 1950s and later people were willing to satisfy whatever hunger they had to see opera stars by seeing them on television (Bell Telephone Hour, etc.) rather than in movies. I remember seeing Joan Sutherland on the Ed Sullivan Show, and Maria Callas made one appearance there as well. I saw Beverly Sills on Dick Cavett, and Martina Arroyo was one of Johnny Carson's recurring guests . . .

Of course, Melchior played supporting roles (he was a riot in TWO SISTERS FROM BOSTON) whereas Rise Stevens starred. Her first film was probably her best, THE CHOCOLATE SOLDIER (1941) with Nelson Eddy. Opera and classical music stars were no strangers to radio variety shows in the 1930s. Efrem Zimbalist Sr. turned up as an intermission guest telling some jokes on Lux Radio Theater in 1938, and Tibbett and Helen Jepson performed NAUGHTY MARIETTA on Lux around that same time. Madame Schumann-Heinke had her own radio show in 1934 where between songs she held forth with some very opinionated opinions! And RCA sponsored THE MAGIC KEY from 1935-39 that regularly featured both pop and classical music stars such as John McCormick, Paderewski, Gladys Swarthout, and Melchior. Oscar Levant was a regular panelist on the quiz show, INFORMATION PLEASE. George Gershwin had his own show too, the income from which he used to launch PORGY AND BESS.

Oh and Under Your Spell was directed by Otto Ludwig Preminger in his first American film.

I became interested in Tibbett after reading about his talents in Richard Barrios's A Song in the Dark--after hearing some of his performances on YouTube I began tracking down the films. My thoughts on what's left of The Rogue Song are in the thread devoted to that film. Last night I watched New Moon and I enjoyed it.

An early musical based on an operetta liable to be inherently ridiculous, silly, and overblown, but those can be its best qualities too. As Oscar Wilde said, nothing succeeds like excess.

Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore don't go together, except when they sing. The combined force of their voices on "Wanting You" and "Lover Come Back to Me" is a sonic wonder to behold. Moore's acting is not bad, but she has a haughty standoffish quality toward the camera. Tibbett is more relaxed and retains the buoyancy and swashbuckling brio (and shattering baritone) that made him unique as an opera singer/film star. The supporting cast is a worldly set of sly dogs: Adolphe Menjou, Roland Young, and Gus Shy.

Director Jack Conway and cinematographer Oliver T. Marsh sneak in bits of camera movement more sophisticated than expected, but the editor periodically falls asleep. The picture throws in some vigorous battle scenes at the end; they're marred by undercranking. New Moon is a pre-code film with some eyebrow raising lines and innuendos in its first third. Most jaw-dropping of all is Tibbett's savage performance of "What Is Your Price Madam"--at an engagement party!

I plan on watching Cuban Love Song and Metropolitan next. I'm not sure if I'll see The Prodigal or Under Your Spell, since these seem to be lesser films and their highlights are on CD. So far my favorite performance of Tibbett's is the album version of "Without a Song." I could be wrong, but it's slightly different from the screen version in The Prodigal (also on YouTube).

Yesterday I caught up with The Cuban Love Song (1931). In terms of direction, editing, and technique it feels light years ahead of New Moon (1930) or what's left of The Rogue Song. What a difference one year and a veteran director make! W.S. Van Dyke keeps everything bubbling along, though initially he seems more comfortable with drama than singing. The film opens with Tibbett singing "Tramps At Sea" full blast while getting tattooed, which is reminiscent of the sillier parts of his past operettas. The remaining songs are more convincingly integrated into the story, including an inventive scene of Tibbett dueting with his younger self.

The pairing of Tibbett and Lupe Velez absolutely should not work, but strangely it does. Van Dyke and his actors devise a convincing emotional connection--Velez is excitable and impassioned; Tibbett calm, accepting, and teasing. There are moments of physical contact, gesturing, and intimacy that seem nearly spontaneous. You actually feel a degree of sadness when the characters part.

Maybe that's why the end is disappointing. When Tibbett boards the ship back to Cuba, the screenwriters (all seven of them!) find themselves in a quandary of racial/matrimonial nature and use some second-hand Madame Butterfly to get out. The result is a hasty and slapdash way of getting Velez out of the picture and giving Tibbett a consolation prize--another burden for his already put-upon wife.

The supporting cast is very good. Karen Morley is so naturalistic and unaffected in her thankless part that she makes Tibbett's character look like an even bigger heel. Jimmy Durante has not yet become a cartoon. Ernest Torrence isn't given enough to do, but he seems like a completely different actor in a non-villainous, plebeian role. I have no idea how much of the film was actually made in Cuba (if any), but Van Dyke and the MGM crew do a splendid role of conveying a tropical vibe.

I've not seen CUBAN LOVE SONG in some time, but would definitely encourage you to check out METROPOLITAN. Tibbett sings several arias (Figaro's Largo from BARBER and the Toreador Song from CARMEN among others; possibly PAGLIACCI prologue, too, if memory serves). Alice Brady is a hoot as the head of the opera company.

While NEW MOON has the usual early-talkie clunkiness, one major plus is that I believe the songs were done live, not pre-recorded. I'm sure there has been a thread on this site as to when the playback practice came into play, but pretty certain Tibbett and Moore are singing live on camera. It airs on Jan. 24th on TCM.

Tibbett is one of my all-time favorite opera singers with that great dark baritone voice of his. We're lucky so many of his Met broadcasts survive.

Decotodd wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 02, 2019 6:58 pm

I've not seen CUBAN LOVE SONG in some time, but would definitely encourage you to check out METROPOLITAN. Tibbett sings several arias (Figaro's Largo from BARBER and the Toreador Song from CARMEN among others; possibly PAGLIACCI prologue, too, if memory serves). Alice Brady is a hoot as the head of the opera company.

While NEW MOON has the usual early-talkie clunkiness, one major plus is that I believe the songs were done live, not pre-recorded. I'm sure there has been a thread on this site as to when the playback practice came into play, but pretty certain Tibbett and Moore are singing live on camera. It airs on Jan. 24th on TCM.

Tibbett is one of my all-time favorite opera singers with that great dark baritone voice of his. We're lucky so many of his Met broadcasts survive.

The earliest example of playback I know of is 'The Wedding of the Painted Doll' number in THE BROADWAY MELODY which was reshot but using the earlier recording. And ironically the Technicolor is now missing although there has been an attempt to colourise it...

Just a couple of comments about Tibbett:
I was lent a disc of METROPOLITAN, and only saw it once. My main recollection was that each song or aria was done straight through, and complete. No cutting back and forth to dialog scenes, etc. That was a pleasure in a rather innocuous movie.
As to ROGUE SONG, while at Turner Entertainment I was contacted by a professor of music (I forget his name) from Tibbett's home town of Bakersvield CA, who was doing a search for any surviving parts of this film. The old MGM negative inventory card had an entry from, I think, 1937 that simply said "shipped". All we can guess is that the 2-color Technicolor negative was deemed useless, and was destroyed. A couple of sequences survive, primarily with Laurel & Hardy in a cave with a bear. It contains a brief shot of Tibbett. Also surviving is a ballet sequence, but only with dancers. These were probably removed from a print by some projectionist, and somehow got to a collector.

Based on listening to the soundtrack of ROGUE SONG, the singing seems to have the same ambiance as the dialogue, suggesting to me that that the songs were not pre-recorded and played back for lip-synching. I have no idea which film was the "first" to use lip-synching but Paul Whiteman claimed that he insisted all the musical numbers in KING OF JAZZ be pre-recorded. I recall PW being quoted, "You can't just string a bunch of microphones and think that you're going to get a good balance between the orchestra, chorus, and soloists."

Bob

bobfells wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 18, 2012 8:57 am

Well, Tibbett's vocal deterioration has been preserved in the Met broadcasts from the 40s. For example, a January 1943 broadcast of Verdi's Del Forza del Destino has Tibbett singing Don Carlo. He can certainly carry a tune but his voice is constricted as though he was forcing out the notes. Gone is that beautiful "bloom" in his voice. His voice "broke" in early 1940 and his commercial recording career seems to have ended at that point. He did make one or two LPs in the early 1950s for a small label that evidently (I have not heard them) chronicles his vocal decline even further. His former concert manager summed up it up: "Tibbett was an intelligent man who realized he had ruined his life."

Granted, this is reaching back a bit to reply, but still...I remember buying a Scala LP in the 1960s--probably recorded in the 1950s, rather than the 40s--that featured Tibbett trying to sing around a series of pre-recorded orchestral tracks. His voice was completely shot, worse than Gino Bechi in the early 1950s or Tito Schipa in the early 1960s. It was so unpleasant, especially in light of his 1930s performances, that I never listened to it again. (Fairly sure it's in our basement, though.)

To end on a lighter note: Tibbett was the cousin of tenor Tommy Heyward, who won the 1945 Met Auditions (along with Robert Merrill). Heyward, who I knew well in the late 1970s while putting together early "lost" on-air material of his for release, told the story that after he won, Tibbett appeared suddenly in his dressing room. Instead of congratulating Tommy, Tibbett (with all his impressive dark baritonal register) thundered, "You son of a bitch! Why didn't you use our family name?" and turned and stalked out. Tommy was a very modest man, and it was easy to believe, as he stated, that he didn't want to denigrate the name of Tibbett in case he lost out.

Since I wrote that blurb (above) I have learned that after Tibbett died in 1960 an autopsy was performed. The muscles controlling his larynx had lost their elasticity which seemed to explain his decline beginning in 1940. I understand that he could have sang well as either a baritone or a tenor but "forced" his voice to the lower registers and damaged his "instrument" as they say. On a record for "Cuban Love Song" Victor overdubbed him singing as a tenor and we hear him sing a duet with himself.

Bob

bobfells wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 26, 2021 10:38 pm

Since I wrote that blurb (above) I have learned that after Tibbett died in 1960 an autopsy was performed. The muscles controlling his larynx had lost their elasticity which seemed to explain his decline beginning in 1940. I understand that he could have sang well as either a baritone or a tenor but "forced" his voice to the lower registers and damaged his "instrument" as they say. On a record for "Cuban Love Song" Victor overdubbed him singing as a tenor and we hear him sing a duet with himself.
Bob

Interesting! Thanks for that. Tommy maintained that he fell in with a woman who belonged to a young, fast set, encouraging his drinking. It's easy to see where the two, excessive drinking and larynx issues, might feed into one another, especially with a singer worrying over decline.

I also have to wonder how Tibbett would have sounded as a trained tenor. His baritone had such a dark quality to the notes, and unlike other, similar baritones I can think of. Of course, this does happen, when a singer chooses between two registers, or even establishes a career of sorts in one register, before shifting--Melchior and Zanelli being two outstanding examples (though Zanelli's career was cut so short due to cancer).

Referring to my earlier post about the professor in Bakersfield CA who was doing research on Tibbett: I found his name, Jerome Kleinsasser. If interested, his obituary can be found on Google.

I decided to visit Archive.org to copy its 78 of Tibbett's Victor recording of "Cuban Love Song" from his 1931 MGM film. Lots of ticks, crackle, and hiss that I processed out with my software. The ending is novel in that Tibbett is overdubbed singing tenor and harmonizes with his baritone. Adding a few photos I made a video out it and posted it on YT. Here's the link:

https://youtu.be/guZrQmum0Bo

Bob

bobfells wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 29, 2021 10:04 pm

I decided to visit Archive.org to copy its 78 of Tibbett's Victor recording of "Cuban Love Song" from his 1931 MGM film. Lots of ticks, crackle, and hiss that I processed out with my software. The ending is novel in that Tibbett is overdubbed singing tenor and harmonizes with his baritone. Adding a few photos I made a video out it and posted it on YT. Here's the link:

https://youtu.be/guZrQmum0Bo

Bob

Thanks! It is very clean, and Tibbett is, as ever in his heyday, stylish and graceful. The part also lies fairly high for a baritone. His "duet" at the end is credible, but I suspect his short top may have been the reason behind the baritone part rising to the tonic, where you might expect the tenor to do it.