Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

HBOMax has it and I had never seen a great quality print of it until last night. The best scenes I had viewed had been from “That’s Entertainment.” In the print HBO is streaming, the color is a bit washed out in the first scene but it improves significantly and the barn raising number is spectacular. I think Russ Tamblyn, Julie Newmar, and Ruta Lee are the only cast members still among the living but most of the cast lived long lives. Sadly, hot Jeff Richards did not. He could be one of the few actors in SBFSB who looked hot as a redhead.

I saw it at Radio City. I had seen it many times before on TV but on that enormous very wide Cinemascope screen the barn raising dance was quite as spectacular as it gets. Had I been around when it first played there I probably would have gone once a week during its long run.

Howard Keel was a real fucking man.

Watch the alternative widescreen version, it opens up more screen area and shows more bulges.

I want seven non-cis women for seven non-binary siblings.

Get with it, it's 2022!

Lonesome Polecat is one of my favorite scenes from a musical ever.

Russ Tamblyn had never danced before Seven Brides. He had been a gymnast in school and then trained as an acrobat. Director Stanley Donen and choreographer Michael Kidd decided to take a chance on him.

Tommy Rail is so hot in this movie it's unbelievable. In every dance scene he has so much libidinous aggression and energy that I wouldn't have been surprised for him to have shouted out at any point, "I'll fuck anything that moves!" like Dennis Hopper in "Blue Velvet."

Oh the things I would have done to Tommy Rall.

Tommy Rall outdances Fosse in My Sister Eileen and Kiss Me Kate. He was pretty fabulous. He lived a long time but nobody seemed to have interviewed him. I wonder if he didn't do interviews. He was thrown away in Funny Girl.

Any man-on-man butt action in this movie?

The movie isn't called Seven Brothers for Seven Brothers.

I love Russ Tamblyn in his early years. I loved him in Peyton Place. In Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, some of the brothers seemed like they were actors but dancers.

Do you know how disappointed I was to find out it’s a MUSICAL??!?

I consider that dance sequence at the barn raising to be one of the best performances of dance on screen in the history of cinema, absolutely stunning.

Seven cocks for one brother

This is a long 2007 interview with Rall, mostly about working with Jerome Robbins, but also Ethel Merman and others.

Preferred 7 Brides for 1 Brother.

More like Seven Brides For Seven Bottoms.

R14 But it is one of the few musicals based on a mass rape: the Rape of the Sabine Women.

[quote] More like Seven Brides For Seven Bottoms.

If anyone is the history of the world were assuredly not a bottom, it would have been Tommy Rall.

I have the DVD signed by Julie Newmar.

I think rape here means in the sense of abduction not rape rape.

R23 Well, it was first abduction, then rape, as fun as it might be Romulus couldn’t found Rome alone with his merry band of warriors and since didn’t have any of their own women and needed to perpetuate their numbers, they abducted the Sabine woman as brides and raped them into submission. I prefer the sculptures over the paintings.

Thank you for that interview with Rall. He seems pretty miffed that Robbins didn't call him himself and if he remembered the choreography for Mr. Monotony he couldn't be bothered to go to the effort of sharing it. The brand new choreography in Jerome Robbin's Broadway was completely unmemorable. I just wish the interview had been longer and they had covered his career in Hollywood and what his relationship with Fosse had been like.

[quote]...and raped them into submission

Citation needed.

I would have asked her to sign it as Julie Newmeyer, r22...

Another dimwitted self-important academic who doesn't know shit but just froths at the mouth.

She was wonderful, wonderful in it, r29.

Wonderful, wonderful day!

R26 Basically, the last paragraph explains it, the Romans continued to fight the Sabines who wanted their women back. But after years of being wives and then mothers of the children of Roman men, then they stepped between their warring husbands and the fathers and brothers and demanded that the fighting end.

I love Jacque Louis David's interpretation, where the soldiers are all naked while the women are mostly dressed. As it should be in real life.

We had buttocks then, r33.

A barn raising with naked brothers would have been hotter.

R32 - I'm still missing the part where they were "raped into submission."

R21 - why wouldn't Tommy Rall be a bottom?

It's a wonderful movie, and it's one of the few movies directed by Stanley Donen (solo) that I really love. I read somewhere that Donen wanted to cast Judy Garland in it. I think MGM also thought about casting her in Kiss Me, Kate. Interesting considering they had so much trouble with her.

This is Lonesome Polecat with Matt Mattox's own voice (rather than dubbed, in the film, by Bill Lee). I like it a lot better. No idea why it wasn't used. His voice suits him (surprise), and also suits the number better.

Bless Your Beautiful Arse!

[quote]A barn raising with naked brothers would have been hotter.

A big-budget gay porn version would be awesome.

[quote] This is Lonesome Polecat with Matt Mattox's own voice (rather than dubbed, in the film, by Bill Lee). I like it a lot better. No idea why it wasn't used. His voice suits him (surprise), and also suits the number better.

Wow. Thanks for this. I am the one upthread who said I love this number. The original voice does sound good, but if I can be nitpicky his "ooo ooo ooo oooh" is a little pitchy. Maybe that's why they dubbed him.

And don't forget, :"you can't sleep when you sleep with sheep"

Like r43 doesn't have a pitchy ooo ooo ooo oooh!

There is a then and now video on youtube for this movie. As a young man Russ Tamblyn looked surprisingly like Richard Beymer.

[R7]: I was lucky enough to see Rall onstage, twice, in “Cry For Us All,” when it tried out in Boston in 1970. His best moment was a solo dance, a kind of ritualistic jig, during the title number, taking place at a wake at the end of Act I. He had terrific energy, but it was used to express deep grief, as the chorus keened around him. A stirring performance.

At that time, the show had a different title, “Who to Love,” and the first time I saw it, it had a completely different structure. Star Joan Diener was out, replaced by her understudy, Willi Burke, who played the lead role closer to the truth of the character, a shy, guilt-ridden Catholic. The second time I went, Diener was back, along with flashier costumes, and songs, and she played the same character as a former Aldonza. Entertaining, but awful for the show. It later closed shortly after opening in New York.

But Tommy Rall was wonderful in it.

Why didn't he have a bigger Broadway career? His voice seems to be as strong as his dancing.

Wasn't Cry for Us All the last time he was on Broadway?

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