I read that she was dubbed by another actress, who's identity, even today, has never been revealed. I also read some varying accounts, one saying ALL of her lines were dubbed by someone else, another saying only a few of her lines were dubbed by someone else. I'm not sure which one is correct.
To anyone who are big fans of her, which of her lines are genuinely her voice, and which ones are someone else's?
That seems odd. Maybe there was just extraneous sounds recorded that prevented her lines from being heard. Anyway, thank God they didn't dub her face! Mmmmm. :0)
shareI can only assume that the lines that are not her's are the outdoor scenes, and the ones that are her's are the indoor ones.
I sure hope any big fans of Ms. Bisset lurking here, can clear this up once and for all.
On the film's commentary track, director Stanley Donen says it was necessary to redub ALL of Jacqueline Bisset's dialogue. It was something he hated to do (besides loving her looks, he loved the sound of her voice), but post-production work on Two For The Road required a great deal of looping. And Bisset couldn't do any of it, because she was shooting The Detective in Hollywood.
In cases like these a director will hire someone to redub the problem scenes and hope the new voice blends seamlessly with the voice already on the soundtrack; if it doesn't (as was apparently the case with Bisset), then the new actress will redub ALL the existing dialogue. This is done for the sake of continuity, so all the character's dialogue will sound like it came from the same person.
Okay, here are some other things I'd like to know: Was TFTR the only film Bisset made in which she was looped by another actress in post-production? Was the The Detective the film that made her a huge star? And why couldn't they just wait for her to do ALL redubbing on TFTR then fly to Hollywood to shoot her other film? What was the hurry?
Then again, this IS Hollywood we're talking about here. Almost nothing they do makes any sense at all.
Not long after shooting her scenes for Two For The Road, Bisset found herself in the middle of a bizarre Hollywood situation - one that wasn't of her own making.
Around that time, Frank Sinatra was getting ready to shoot The Detective, which was to have featured Mia Farrow (his then wife) in a key role. But when shooting was scheduled to begn, Farrow was still filming Rosemary's Baby. Sinatra told her to report to work; Farrow said she couldn't. Sinatra told her to quit the Polanski movie; Farrow refused & told him she was going to honor her commitment. What followed was one of Hollywood's most high-profile break-ups, and Farrow was served with divorce papers on the set of Rosemary's Baby. This meant she was also out of The Detective, and Sinatra quickly signed Bisset as her replacement - just as post-synchronization work on Two For The Road was getting underway. But Sinatra, for whatever reason, refused to make Bisset available to Stanley Donen. And Donen, now under a deadline to complete Two For The Road, had to deal with the situation as best he could.
The Detective wasn't the film that made Bisset a star, but it raised her profile and led to her being cast in Bullitt, the movie that really got people talking about her (when they weren't discussing the film's chase sequence). She continued to do A-list projects throughout the early 70s, then became a wet t-shirt icon with The Deep.
I'm afraid I don't know of any other instances in which Bisset's voice wasn't used in a film's final cut.
Thanks for clearing everything. And as for your last sentence, well that's a relief. The dubbed voice in TFTR, doesn't do any justice compared to her real one heard elsewhere.
sharemurph24, sorry for the double post, but I just realized something else:
Throughout her career, Jacqueline starred in several non-English-speaking European films. They were as follows:
The White Scale (French)
The American Night (French)
The Magnificent (French)
The Judge and His Hangman (German)
The Sunday Movie (Italian)
Love is not love (Italian)
House of Jade (French)
Rossini! Rossini! (Italian)
Hoffman's Hunger (Dutch)
The Marmots (French)
The Ceremony (French)
People in Love (French)
I know Jacqueline is fluent in French, so I'd imagine she did her own dubbing for the French films, but I'm not sure about the Italian, German and Dutch ones.
I don't know how fluent Bisset is in these other languages, or if she's fluent in them at all. But if she's not, the filmmakers would do what Donen did for Two For The Road - find the best voice available (in the language of the project) that matches Bisset's appearance and, hopefully, her own unique vocal characteristics.
Mind you, I like the voice that Donen used for her in Two For The Road; it's soft, sexy and appealing. It's just that I like Bisset's voice more.
And to pause for a moment of Bisset-love, I wanted to mention that Francois Truffaut's Day For Night (aka The American Night) is the film that made me aware of how good she actually is. She really holds her own with a strong international cast, giving a performance that's nuanced, charismatic and genuinely touching.
An added bonus: The audience gets to hear how dynamite she sounds in both English and French.
I wonder how different Jacqueline's career might have turned out had she done the post-production dubs for her character in Two for the Road?
shareEven if she'd been available for the looping of Two For The Road, I doubt her career would have progressed any differently. She was essentially window dressing in a film that spotlighted Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney; besides, it only played to a limited audience when it was released. And by that point she was already negotiating for a role in Bullitt, the film that really put her in the spotlight.
Once again, it's not as if they'd dubbed her with a shrieking, terrible voice for Two For The Road; I thought the voice sounded fine. And directors who met her afterwards were surprised to discover she sounded even BETTER than they remembered.
Since I've come to accept the fact that she was dubbed by someone else in TFTR, there's something else I'd like to address:
The filming dates for this film, as listed here, are May 3, 1966 - September 1, 1966. The film has a 1966 copyright date, which represents the year it was ultimately completed in. The official release date was on April 27, 1967.
How can this be true if post-production work supposedly took place in 1967? Also, Mia Farrow's divorce from Frank Sinatra was also 1967. Rosemary's Baby was filmed throughout much of the latter part of 1967, not long after the book it was based on was released.
As I understand, this was only the 4th film Jacqueline made. Casino Royale and The Cape Town Affair were filmed in (I believe) 1967, the same year, The Detective was allegedly filmed in.
I never stopped to look at the specific dates, but it's true; there are discrepancies there.
One source reported Farrow received divorce papers from Sinatra in November 1967, about seven months after Two For The Road was released. So I re-listened to Donen's comments about Bisset on the commentary track; he definitely states she wasn't available for post-production work because she was in Hollywood making a film with Frank Sinatra. However, he prefaces his recollections with the words "As I recall," so it's possible there were other circumstances that kept Bisset from looping her character's dialogue.
Maybe one day Bisset will give an interview or write a book that will throw more light onto this.
One thing is certain: Donen was crazy about Bisset and talks about what a knockout she was at her audition & how much he loved her voice, so something unavoidable must have kept her from doing post-production work.
As luck would have it, I managed to come across a vintage article that was written about Jacqueline in late 1966. It doesn't mention the fact that she was revoiced by someone else in TFTR, but it does mention the fact that as of the fall of 1966, she had completed 5 films, with TFTR being the most recent, and her part in the Casino Royale parody was filmed earlier that year. The article also mentions one of her films as "You Just Die Quickly". I believe they were referring to Drop Dead Darling.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=KgUrAAAAIBAJ&sjid=7ZcFAAAAIBA J&pg=5505,770619&dq=two+for+the+road+audrey+hepburn&hl=en
The article also mentions that after TFTR, she was flown down to Hollywood to attend 20th Century Fox's new Talent School. She made TFTR for them (followed by The Cape Town Affair, The Sweet Ride, and The Detective). So now the question is, why didn't the Talent School just wait for Jacqueline to dub herself during post-production of TFTR, before coming down to Hollywood? Whatever the answer may be it confirms that Two for the Road was indeed filmed and completed in 1966.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=AwAqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-CcEAAAAIBA J&pg=6359,343349&dq=two+for+the+road+bissett&hl=en
Here's another vintage article I dug up. This one mentions Jacqueline taking over for Mia Farrow in Frank Sinatra's The Detective in the fall of 1967.
Edited to Add: Upon doing even more research, I found out that the filming dates for The Detective were from October 10-December 8, 1967.