Product Description

The movies came alive with the sound of music when Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II teamed up to pen a spectacular string of musical hits, including "Oklahoma!" The King and I," "South Pacific" and of course "The Sound of Music." Join host Shirley Jones and leading ladies Julie Andrews, Rita Moreno, Nancy Kwan and Charmian Carr for the ultimate behind-the-scenes tour of their motion picture masterpieces. With spectacular film footage and never-before-seen outtakes, screen tests and home movies, "Rodgers and Hammerstein: The Sound of Movies" shows us why these are the songs we'll be singing for a thousand years. Shirley Jones, Julie Andrews, Rita Moreno, Nancy Kwan, Charmian Carr Kevin Burns 96 1995 Not Rated No Full Frame Color 5.1 Dolby Digital English No None None Unknown 1

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15640 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2002-04-02
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 100 minutes

Amazon.com
Sure, everyone's seen The Sound of Music, but how about Flower Drum Song? Or State Fair, either the 1945 version (a remake of a 1933 nonmusical) or the 1962 re-remake with Bobby Darin, Ann-Margret, and Pat Boone? Rodgers & Hammerstein: The Sound of Movies is a comprehensive and entertaining 97-minute documentary surveying the film career of the beloved songwriting team and how their screen work was interwoven with their stage work. (State Fair was written directly for the screen before they began adapting their stage shows for film.) Host Shirley Jones (the ingenue in both Oklahoma! and Carousel) provides numerous trivia tidbits on most of the films, while segments on The King and I, Flower Drum Song, and The Sound of Music are presented by those who appeared in them: Rita Moreno (Tuptim), Nancy Kwan (Linda Low), and Charmian Carr (Liesl), respectively. Also of interest will be original casting possibilities (James Dean in Oklahoma!, Marlon Brando in Carousel), rarely seen outtakes, live television performances, and clips from films that inspired Rodgers and Hammerstein's shows (including Rex Harrison as the king of Siam). Because Rodgers and Hammerstein's films were deeply involved in the development of widescreen techniques such as CinemaScope, this documentary is savvy enough to present its clips in letterboxed widescreen format, but that footage is occasionally grainy. Unfortunately, The Sound of Movies was filmed in 1995, four years before the release of sumptuous remasterings of six of these featured films. --David Horiuchi

DVD features
The 2002 DVD rerelease of Rodgers & Hammerstein: The Sound of Movies is a significant upgrade over the earlier DVD. That had no bonus features, but there are plenty here: trailers for eight of the referenced films, three Movietone newsreels, and, best of all, a variety of screen tests borrowed from Hollywood Screen Tests, Take 1. You'll see, for example, a number of von Trapp children (whose tests were only glimpsed in the main program), Ann-Margret smoking up the screen with "Mack the Knife," Andy Williams wooing Barbara Eden before crooning "It's a Grand Night for Singing," "All I Owe Ioway," and "It Might as Well Be Spring," and a 20-second snippet of a young Mia Farrow singing "Sixteen Going on Seventeen." Also, the PCM stereo track has been upgraded to Dolby Digital 2.0 and 5.1 and even DTS tracks; the sound, though, remains inconsistent due to the documentary's wide range of source material. --David Horiuchi

Customer Reviews

Fall in Love with Rodgers & Hammerstein
I was browsing through the DVD section when I came across this gem. I'm not a big musical lover myself but I found myself humming along by the end of the DVD. "Rodgers & Hammerstein - The Sound of Movies" is a well done A & E television production. The various sections of the DVD are hosted by Shirley Jones, Rita Moreno,Charmian Carr, and Nancy Kwan. The documentary covers classic movie productions of State Fair, Oklahoma!, Carousel, The King and I, The Sound of Music, etc. With interesting tidbits about casting, production, missing scenes and/or songs, this documentary has something both people who love the musicals and those who have never seen them before. By the end of the documentary, you actually will want to see the movies themselves. There are no special features to the DVDs except the ability to do chapter searches so there probabily is no advantage to buying this on DVD versus VHS or laserdisc.

RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN LIVES ON
For my final critic,i've made a nice pick with this excellent documentary, that has excerps of all of the duo's screen adaptations ,along with some footage of DICK AND OSCAR on GROUCHO MARX SHOW(he makes fun of their names)and some scenes never seen before ,like FRANK SINATRA singing a song from CAROUSEL.To present this, they choose actors who were in these movies:SHIRLEY JONES,JULIE ANDREWS,RITA MORENO ,and even the girl who dubbed DEBORAH KERR for THE KING AND I.A documentary well worth seeing ,that can certainly be the start for future fans to be.You'll have fun seeing screen adaptations in different countries.There is no doubt today that RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN are part of the AMERICAN culture heritage, it's no wonder that TIME made them entertainer of the century.

Wonderful for R&H Fans
Aside from the excellent documentary the extras are a great bonus-especially the screen tests. For the remake of STATE FAIR you get to see Ann-Margret's entire original Fox screen test, she sings Bill Bailey, Mack the Knife and in a test for the role of Margy she does a scene and sings It Might As Well Be Spring. Also included are test scenes for the part of Emily-the part she played in the movie. Andy Williams tests for the part of Pat (the reporter) with Barbara Eden as Margy and he sings a bit of All I Owe Ioway (he's from Iowa) and then does a great version of It Might As Well Be Spring. There's also something called Foreign Dubbing Test/The Sound of Music which is Marni Nixon singing most of the songs Julie Andrews sings in the movie. They don't explain exactly what it's for but it's a nice bonus. Mitzi Gaynor performs A Cockeyed Optimist and A Wonderful Guy in her test for South Pacific. There are also a bunch of Sound of Music tests as well. Since these aren't on the DVDs of the movies themselves they are a great addition for R&H movie fans.