Popular McGovern to grace TEF stage

By Teresa Williams

THOMASVILLE The "Stradivarius Voice" will be heard in Thomasville on Nov. 2 when Maureen McGovern takes the stage for the second concert of the 2006-2007 Thomasville Entertainment Foundation season. McGovern's career spans nearly 35 years and includes recordings, concerts, Broadway, films, television, radio and composing. She has earned a reputation for being one of America's most popular artists. Her current recordings, "The Music Never Ends: The Lyrics of Alan and Marilyn Bergman" and "Out of This World: McGovern Sings Arlen," have earned rave reviews. McGovern also founded the "Works of Heart" Foundation for Music and Healing to address emotional and inspirational needs of patients and caregivers.

Thomasville Times-Enterprise: "When did you know that you wanted to be a singer and how did it happen?"
Maureen McGovern: "Family lore has it I would wake up in the middle of night and be bellowing out a song at the top of my lungs, everything from 'Goodnight Irene' to whatever my mother had on the radio. From third grade on, I joined grade school choir, church choir and I just knew what I wanted to do with my life."

TTE: "How would you describe your music to someone who has never heard it?"
MM: "I try to find the essence and honesty of the song. I sing jazz to classical to theater to pop. I'm a very eclectic singer, so it is hard to describe it in that way, but I'm a storyteller and I love great stories and great music."

TTE: "How did you get the name 'The Stradivarius Voice?'"
MM: "All these great composers I have worked with called it 'the stradivarius of the voice,' and soon symphonies started calling me that and it became my nickname. I was known as the disaster theme queen in the 1970s, so I would much rather be called this."

TTE: "Speaking of films, what was it like to come onto the recording scene with songs like 'The Morning After' from 'The Poseidon Adventure,' 'We May Never Love Like This Again' from 'The Towering Inferno' and 'Can You Read My Mind?' from 'Superman?' How did that process happen?"
MM: "I recorded the song for 'The Poseidon Adventure' in November 1972 without having seen the film, it was released in December. The song was released along with the movie and it did nothing. Then it was nominated for an Oscar, and I guess the public got curious. It won and there was a lot of support from the public and it forced the record company to re-release the song. It was pretty much a Cinderella story, but I learned many lessons. When I recorded the theme for 'The Towering Inferno,' I was in the movie singing the song. I had not seen 'Superman,' either, but I heard about the movie and recorded the song that was meant to try and capture the feel of the film. It's thrilling, like the first time your song airs on the radio. The first time I heard 'The Morning After,' I almost drove off the road. To see your name up there on a movie screen ten feet tall is also very thrilling."

TTE: "What's the story behind your 'Works of Heart' Foundation for Music and Healing?"
MM: "It's a life affirming positive music program for patients and caregivers. I've worked with the Muscular Dystrophy Association for 26 years, AIDS organizations, cancer organizations and others, so I've really been an advocate for patients and caregivers. I lost both my parents to cancer, so I really understand the heart and soul of patients and caregivers. I think some sort of balance for the heart, mind and soul is really important, and I hope in the next chapter of life that I get more and more time allotted to spend with that."

TTE: "What can people expect from your concert?"
MM: "I'm doing the music of Richard Rodgers, particularly his film and theater work with Oscar Hammerstein and Larry Hart, the two lyricists he worked with for the majority of his career. He couldn't have worked with two more drastically different styles: the wry wit of Hart and the open-hearted Americana standards of Hammerstein. He had a very rich, prolific life and I think he is one of our greatest national treasures. The show was put together as a tribute, to find what was timeless about his material, why it is relevant and why we are still listening to it. I've tried to find a new way of presenting the songs so that it feels like you're hearing it for the first time and some interesting gems that people have not heard."

TTE: "Do you have a favorite song that you like to perform live?"
MM: "There are so many, but the two I love in this show are 'It Never Entered My Mind,' written by Larry Hart, and 'This Nearly Was Mine' by Oscar Hammerstein. Hart's is a wonderfully wry, witty and hauntingly sad song; Hammerstein's is from 'South Pacific' and is one of the most beautiful songs ever written."

TTE: "Have you ever traveled to Thomasville before?"
MM: "This is my first time. I'm looking forward to sharing my Rodgers show with everybody. It's nice, after playing Marmee (in "Little Women, The Musical"), to go out into a series of concerts for the next six months. It's nice to have the freedom to do concerts, even though I love theater, because I absolutely love music."

August 9, 2006
The National Ledger

CELEBRITY SCENE:

What a super-eclectic assortment of celebrities turned out to see Maureen McGovern and company at Broadway L.A.'s presentation of "Little Women" at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood -- from former child stars Jane Withers and Margaret O'Brien to improv actress of the hour, Wendi McLendon-Covey (of cable's "Reno 911!" and "Lovespring International" series), to such names as Joe Mantegna, Earl Holliman, Judy Tenuta, Shirley Jones and Jo Anne Worley.

Click for more info.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972),
released to DVD

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment's new special edition DVD of The Poseidon Adventure adds a pair of commentaries and a separate disc loaded with extra content.

• Featurettes - There are six of them in this section, all clocking in at under 10 minutes, "The Cast Looks Back" speaks for itself. "Falling Up with Ernie" is a focus on the actor, Ernie Orsatti (originally uncredited), who performs the incredible stunt fall into the skylight as the ship capsizes. "The Writer: Stirling Silliphant" is also fairly easy to figure out. The focus here is on Silliphant (one of two screenwriters), who also wrote The Towering Inferno, In the Heat of the Night (1967) and the ever-impressive Shaft in Africa (1973). "The Hereos of the Poseidon" is a too-short discussion of the film's themes and its literary influences. "The Morning After Story" focuses on the song, "The Morning After," that won the film one of its two Academy Award (the other was for "Special Achievement in Visual Effects"). Lynley, along with songwriter Al Kasha, singer Maureen McGovern and vocalist Renee Armand (Lynley's singing voice in the film) all talk about the film's memorable and enduring theme song. "R.M.S. Queen Mary"offers little in the way of background on the cruise ship, the Queen Mary. Instead, this feature looks at the locations on the actual ship where the film was shot before the tidal wave (subsequent scenes were filmed in a soundstage)

Old 'Poseidon' director feared critical dunking

Friday, May 12, 2006
By Barbara Vancheri, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Ronald Neame, a British-born director with a gentlemanly style of speaking, thought he and his movie were sunk.

Gene Hackman, as a rebellious reverend, helps a fellow passenger in the 1972 "The Poseidon Adventure."

"People between the ages of 10 and 15 absolutely loved it. Our more sophisticated critics absolutely hated it, and when it was finished, the press slaughtered us, and I thought we had a flop on our hands, but history has proved me wrong."

"The Poseidon Adventure" became a hit after its December 1972 release, won Academy Awards for best song and visual effects, set the standard for disaster movies of the era and confirmed producer Irwin Allen as the master of disaster. It also spawned "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" and this week's "Poseidon."

Neame, who recently turned 95, shares his remembrances (including the one above) on a new two-disc edition of "The Poseidon Adventure."

He diplomatically concedes he should have reined in stars Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine, who didn't just chew the scenery but gnawed it to the bone. "Maybe, on hindsight, I should have held both Ernie and Gene down a little bit," he says on one of the full-length commentaries.

Hackman felt he was "slumming it" after winning an Academy Award for playing Popeye Doyle in "The French Connection." But, Neame adds, "We all thought we were slumming it a bit, except perhaps Irwin Allen, who had tremendous faith in it from the word go."

Among other tidbits from Neame: Shelley Winters filmed her death scene to opera music; actress Carol Lynley was terrified of heights, just like her character; and some of the crew and a running camera slipped under the water during a scene in which Hackman rescued the precocious boy played by Eric Shea.

Plans called for an ending in which the handful of survivors would emerge from the S.S. Poseidon to see a flotilla of waiting ships. The budget was exhausted by that point, so the half-dozen passengers are whisked away by chopper in a tightly composed shot.

As "Poseidon," based on the same Paul Gallico novel that inspired the 1970s adventure, opens, we look at how the two movies stack up:

BUDGET
1972: $5 million (nearly $24 million in today's dollars).
2006: Estimated $140 million.

RUNNING TIME
1972: 117 minutes.
2006: 98 minutes.

RATING
1972: PG.
2006: PG-13 for intense prolonged sequences of disaster and peril.

DIRECTOR
1972: British cinematographer-turned-director Ronald Neame. Although picked by the head of 20th Century Fox for the job, he was an unusual choice, given his previous work, such as the musical "Scrooge," "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" and "The Chalk Garden."
2006: Must be something in the water; that's where the German-born Wolfgang Petersen does some of his best work. The 65-year-old earned Oscar nominations for writing and directing the submarine drama "Das Boot" and later made "The Perfect Storm."

STAR POWER
1972: Gene Hackman won the Academy Award for "The French Connection" in April, just as "Poseidon" was starting to shoot. Ensemble also included Shelley Winters, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Roddy McDowall, Stella Stevens, Jack Albertson, Carol Lynley, Pamela Sue Martin and young Eric Shea.
2006: Not a lot of Oscar power here, just Richard Dreyfuss as a suicidal architect who wears a gaudy diamond earring, apparently to telegraph that he's gay. He's joined by Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Emmy Rossum, Mike Vogel, Jacinda Barrett, 10-year-old Jimmy Bennett, Mia Maestro, Freddy Rodriguez and Andre Braugher.

MANO A MANO
1972: Hackman vs. Borgnine. Hackman is a rebellious reverend while Borgnine is a cop married to a former prostitute. They bicker and boil over, and when Hackman sacrifices himself, he barks one last order to the detective: "Get them through!"
2006: Lucas vs. Russell, although they're practically best buddies compared to the previous pair. Lucas is a professional gambler and ex-Navy man while Russell is a former firefighter and an ex-New York mayor.

TOP PROP
1972: A towering Christmas tree, which the hardy band of survivors use to climb out of the ballroom.
2006: Although there are multimillion-dollar set pieces and an air shaft that will give you claustrophobia from across the theater, a simple cross necklace comes in handy.

WOMEN'S WEAR DAILY
1972: As we know, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did but backward and in high heels. The women here, except for Winters, did everything the men did, but in short shorts or no shorts, in the case of Stella Stevens, who shucked her evening gown and donned Borgnine's oversize shirt. They also were saddled with platforms or heels.
2006: Although the women's tops may be a trifle low (at least for the overly protective dad played by Russell), no one is stuck with the impractical wardrobe or footwear of their predecessors.

CHARTING A COURSE
1972: The S.S. Poseidon is en route from New York to Athens when a subsea earthquake creates a 90-foot tidal wave that capsizes the boat as the New Year arrives.
2006: A rogue wave creates a wall of water 150 feet high. It bears down on the luxury cruise ship, pitching it to one side and then rolling it over as the New Year arrives.

SHIP SHAPE
1972: The original combined shots aboard the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, Calif., and a 25-foot model. Sets were also built so the passengers could crawl around a ballroom or barber shop turned upside down.
2006: The ocean, exteriors and the 20-story ocean liner were created with computer graphics while interiors were built the old-fashioned way on five Warner Bros. soundstages.

CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN
1972: Don't call him Shirley, call him Captain. Leslie Nielsen played it straight, even though his appearance now produces titters. It's with a poker face that he delivers lines such as, "Dammit, man, the Poseidon is too fine a lady to be rushed to the junk yard on her last voyage."
2006: Andre Braugher, an Emmy winner for "Homicide," is the captain, who delivers a champagne toast minutes before the ship is slapped by the wave.

MVP
1972: Winters put on 35 pounds to play a plump retiree headed to Israel with her husband. She was a very good swimmer -- Johnny Weissmuller taught her years earlier in Brooklyn -- when hired to play the "underwater swimming champion of New York, three years running." Nominated for a Supporting Actress Oscar, she lost to Eileen Heckart from "Butterflies Are Free."
2006: Lucas, who fell nearly 15 feet during filming. He landed on his hand and tore ligaments in his thumb so severely that he needed surgery. He's the leader of this band with eyes so beautifully blue you wonder if he's wearing contacts to enhance the color.

SONGBIRDS
1972: Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn were given a day to write what became "The Morning After." They hired Renee Armand to sing for Carol Lynley and watched their tune become a worldwide hit for Maureen McGovern. As Kasha suspected as soon as they finished the song, they won the Oscar.
2006: Fergie (Stacy Ferguson) from the Black Eyed Peas plays the ship's headliner. In addition to "Auld Lang Syne," she performs a ballad, "Won't Let You Fall," and a dance number called "Bailamos."

RELIGION CLASS
1972: Hackman's renegade reverend delivers a shipboard sermon setting up the themes and challenges of the movie. "Don't pray to God to solve your problems; pray to that part of God within you. ... Resolve to fight for yourselves and for others and for those you love." He later sacrifices himself to save the group, and it's a little child who leads them.
2006: The most overtly religious character is stowaway Elena (Mia Maestro) headed to New York to visit her ailing brother. She prays, "I know it's been a while, God, and I've been out of touch, but please be with me." Another character quietly mutters, "God rest our souls."

LUDICROUS LINE
1972: After Winters succumbs to a heart attack, Hackman cries, "Oh God! God, not this woman, not this woman." It's not the line but the way Hackman oversells its.
2006: Before attempting a life-threatening maneuver, Mike Vogel turns to Emmy Rossum and says, "I need you to tell me you love me." Sure, we've got all the time in the world.

DUE OUT TUESDAY
1972 Version: "Poseidon Adventure Special Edition," 2-disc set from Fox Home Video, with behind-the-scenes features and two commentary tracks.