Word: previn
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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After countless TV appearances. Diahann landed the role of Clara in Sam Goldwyn's gilded production of Porgy, was horrified when Musical Director Andre Previn permitted her only to mouth the lyrics to Summertime, dubbed in the voice of French-English Songstress Loulie Jean Norman. Explains Previn: "Diahann's voice was a full five tones too low." But Previn also thinks that Diahann has only begun to find her way on that ladder. "When she learns to relax as much on a nightclub floor as in the studio," says he, "she ought to scare people to death...
...Richard Nash, a major Broadway playwright, has fashioned an excellent screenplay, remarkably faithful to DuBose Heyward's libretto. And Oliver Smith has captured the flavor of Catfish Row in an authentic-looking, yet properly stylized set. The color, the lighting, Irene Sharaff's costumes--all beautiful. Andre Previn (winner of last year's Academy Award for his work on Gigi) did the arrangements, which bring a new fullness to the Gershwin score. They are lush in the best Hollywood tradition, but never maudlin...
...wailing crescendos that achieve the remarkable effect of smearing some of the most singable lines ever written. On a United Artists album, Diahann Carroll, who appears as Clara in the movie, gets a chance to sing her own part and a number of other songs with the André Previn Trio (Previn was musical director of the film). Singer Carroll's personal Catfish Row apparently runs east from the Waldorf-Astoria's Empire Room, but at her best-in Oh, I Can't Sit Down and It Ain't Necessarily So-she gives the familiar lyrics...
...Previn's hectic career is sometimes likened to Leonard Bernstein's, a comparison he modestly rejects. The record, though, is of a Jack-of-all-musical-trades, and a master of many. In ten years he has worked on something like 30 films, composing, arranging, orchestrating and conducting quite a few entirely on his own, including It's Always Fair Weather and Bad Day at Black Rock. By "cheating every minute," he has managed to turn out a symphony and a quantity of piano works and chamber music. As a concert pianist, he admires the moderns-Copland...
...onetime Berlin lawyer who now teaches piano, Previn arrived in the U.S. when he was nine, studied piano in high school, was hired, even before he graduated, by M-G-M to arrange the boogie-woogie pieces for Jose Iturbi's Holiday in Mexico. Lately, Previn has been feeling the burdens of age, sharpened by a desire to compose more serious music: "You can't write it in Hollywood. I've had ten years there, and I don't want to look back at myself on my 50th birthday and know I haven't tried...