Curio: Gypsy Rose Lee
Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at 8:01AM Alexa here. In honor of Magic Mike opening this weekend and Nathaniel's Stripper Week -- yes, the blog is going there -- I thought I'd celebrate my favorite film stripper, Natalie Wood as the titular Gypsy Rose Lee (née Louise Hovick). Of course, the film is far from one of the best musical adaptations put on film; if only Ethel Merman had been given the chance to put her Broadway signature performance of Mama Rose on screen (Rosalind Russell was such a drag). But it is probably the rabid Natalie Wood fan in me that can't see anyone else as Gypsy.
Here are some curios (and one of my own) in celebration of the charming ecdysiast.
My vintage tie-in paperback, complete with striptease filmstills.
Click for more including a gorgeous illustration and a bizarre marketing tie-in from 1962.
Illustration by Ari Magen.
Vintage Belgian poster, available here.
An interesting marketing tie-in: Butterfingers?
Curio, Gypsy, Natalie Wood, celebrity portraiture, yummy
Reader Comments (4)
Love the Butterfingers box, what a bizarre tie-in!
I love the film version of Gypsy and while I'm lament the exclusion of the Merm who would have been a bombastic delight I enjoyed many things about Roz's performance. She was much better at shading a performance than Merman so while the singing was wanting I thought she managed to make Madame Rose's insane drive a bit more understandable.
Like you I can imagine no one else but Natalie Wood as Gypsy! I've seen many productions and while the various women playing Rose, Bette Midler, Bernadette Peters, Patti Lupone etc. all have done different memorable things with the part the various actresses playing Louise/Gypsy, and some have been very fine actresses, have never had that star quality that Natalie possessed in spades that made her shine against the juggernaut that is Mama Rose.
If Barbra Streisand ever gets her Gypsy going it will take someone with a lot of charisma to make a mark as Gypsy. I can't think of a single young actress who has the proper combination of grace and grit necessary to carry off the part and compete with Babs megawatt star power.
joel -- great point. yoiu know i hadn't even thought of that star power balance -- maybe because so many versions of Gypsy fail in this regard. and really only the 62 version has it. But yeah, competing with Babs. ouch
silly boys...
don't you know the folks at Digital Domain have nearly completed the software that will allow La Babs to play Louise and Rose?
they are currently casting fro an appropriately lythesome dancing girl whose filmed body will accept the digitally de-aged-to-16 face of Streisand.
why do you think he hired david fincher to direct?
I agree with all of the above who say there is no one today who could replace natalie Wood as Gypsy .. she had the right amount of innocence when needed and then the sexiness when needed. She should have let someone else sing for her, though... I know she wanted desperately to do the singing in West Side Story ... and she was refused ( rightfully so ).