Playing or Pretending to Play Musical Instruments in Films

Having written so far on voice dubbing in movie musicals and doubling in sword fighting scenes, I've been asked about the doubling that occurs when a character in a film plays a musical instrument.

This is, to me, a special type of doubling. Even the many of us who do not sing professionally do sing in the shower or join in on "Happy Birthday," so it's not a foreign thing for an actor to try to sing some in a film or to mime someone else's voice singing. Young boys grow up pretending to be the masked man with the sword or with the gun and run around waving twings as swords and fingers as guns. And so doing some of a fight scene or at least setting one up for a double is not an unusual experience for an actor.

But many of us do not play a musical instrument and don't even know how to hold a violin or flute or cello. We've all seen films in which a character in a movie plays taps-or "charge" and know that it's dubbed in. When Kay Kendall in the 1953 comedy Genevieve starts to play a French horn and her date assumes she can't and she really does play it, she really doesn't play it. Kendall later illustrated the technique in the 1955 comedy Simon and Laura when, as an actress in a television series, she leads friends in a sing-a-long on the piano, and we see the piano is actually being played by a woman off-camera. When actors accompany their singing by playing a guitar and all they do it hold the neck with one hand and strum with the other, they're not really playing.

But when more extended playing is needed, when the film is about a musician and the actor has to be playing all the time and be the focus of attention playing the instrument, what do an actor and a director do?

One of the saddest stories in this vein concerns the classic film Casablanca. Dooley Wilson played Sam the piano player in Rick's Cafe. He immortalized "As Time Goes By." Wilson could sing and was a drummer, but he couldn't play the piano. And so Elliott Carpenter did it out of camera range while Wilson sang. If you look at Wilson's hands, he didn't even try to learn how to finger the keys correctyly. He sits there banging his hands on the presumably soundless keys as if they were a drum. When the movie became an international sensation, Wilson was offered thousands of dollars to sing and play the piano to promote the film in theatres or to perform in nightclubs, but he had to turn all the offers down because he couldn't play. He returned to the Broadway stage where he sang.

In contrast, Tyrone Power portrayed the pianist Eddie Duchin in the 1956 movie The Eddie Duchin Story. Power practiced pretending to play the piano for months, working with a Nat Brandywynne, an orchestra leader and pianist who had known and played with Duchin, rehearsing on pianos that the studio arranged to have at his home, hotels when he was shooting another movie, and his gym. Power was able to master the complete fingering and mimick Duchin's unique playing style for 20 musical numbers that were played on the soundtrack by Carmen Cavallero. The scene in which Power as Duchin plays incredible variations on chopsticks with a young boy on a battered piano during World War Two is amazing, and there is no sign that Power is not really playing.

And, of course, a few actors have actually played musical instruments on film. In Pretty Woman (1990), Richard Gere wrote as well as plays the number in the hotel bar in the early morning hours as Julia Roberts watches, Dustin Hoffman wrote and plays the composition he performs for Emma Thompson in Last Chance Harvey (2008) and also plays the piano in Tootsie (1982), Dudley Moore plays the piano himself in 10 (1979) and Arthur (1981), and James Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder (1959). Jaimie Foxx, portraying Ray Charles in Ray (2004), did all of his own piano playing (and none of the singing). At the end of Song of Love (1947), Katherine Hepburn insisted that the movie end quietly with her as Clara Schuman playing one of her late husband's compositions on the piano, which Hepburn performed herself and was quite pleased with herself to be able to do so. There's also a wonderful episode of "The Jack Benny Show" from Oct. 3, 1954 titled "Jam Session at Jack's" that has as a premise that Jack, who plays the violin, has a weekly jam session with Dick Powell (trumpet), Fred MacMurray (saxophone), Tony Martin (clarinet), Dan Dailey (drums), and Kirk Douglas (banjo). And they really play! They didn't play much if at all in movies, though.

But most actors cannot play musical instruments and are faced with learning to mimick like Power, or learning a little, or just being dubbed.

Montgomery Clift, as part of his craft, learned to play the bugle for his role in From Here to Eternity (1953), even though he knew his playing would be dubbed. Robert DeNiro portrayed a saxophone player in New York, New York (1977). To be convincing, DeNiro learned to play the saxophone somewhat. He mastered the basic technique in order to appear to be playing authentically but on the soundtrack the saxophone parts are played by Georgie Auld. I read in an interview later that after he saw his performance on film he said, "Maybe I should have spent less time with that damn saxophone."

Some actors have been either unwilling to devote the time to appear to be playing accurately or were basically worried that no matter how hard they tried their "playing" would look fake. Sometimes the director and cameraman have had to find ingenious ways to make an actor's playing of an instrument, even when dubbed, look realistic.

In the 1946 movie Humoresque, John Garfield plays a violinist. When he peforms in concert, the camera is positioned so that one violinist's hand fingers and a violinist on the other side bows. (The actual playing on the sountrack is by Issac Stern.) This effect on screen was so convincing that Garfield complained later that when he was invited to parties after the film's release people kept handing him violins to play and he'd have to say that he'd hurt his arm in a fight scene and just wasn't up to bowing. In The Bishop's Wife (1947) Cary Grant, portraying an angel, is supposed to play a harp. He has been taught the basic technique to set it up but then the camera quicky goes to a low angle with Gail Laughton's hands in the foreground with Grant in the background seen through the harp's strings.

On a scale of embarrassment in front of the cast and crew, I would imagine that an actor having two people press against you so that they could substitute their arms for yours would be way up there, much worse than miming someone else's voice or having a double take over for you in a fight scene.

Copyright 2013 by John T. Aquino