Victor/Victoria
"IT was a difficult, multi-faceted role. I mean I’d sometimes be playing a woman trying to be a man, then sometimes play a man with a woman’s feelings, and sometimes just straight on. There were so many things to work out."
"It completely turned my head around. It was an extremely difficult role."
Julie Andrews on Victor/Victoria
Victoria is a poverty-stricken soprano trying to find work in turn-of-the-century Paris. With the help of a worldly-wise nightclub singer, she invents her alter-ego Victor, a female impersonator who is hired to sing at a fashionable night spot. "You want me to be a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman?" Interwoven throughout the comedy and musical numbers are some surprisingly astute observations about gender perceptions, discrimination and the battle of the sexes.
Directed By |
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Blake Edwards |
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Screenplay By |
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Blake Edwards, Han Hoemburg |
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Music By |
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Henry Mancini, Leslie Bricusse |
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Release Date/Runtime |
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19 March 1982 |
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132 Minutes |
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Character |
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Victoria Grant/Count Victor Grezhinski |
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Cast |
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Julie Andrews, James Garner, Robert Preston, Lesley Ann Warren, Alex Karras |
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Victor Victoria Curiosities | ||
The script was based on the 1933 German movie Viktor und Viktoria by Reinhard Schenzel and Hans Hoenburg, it then became the basis of a successful Broadway musical also starring Julie Andrews and directed by Blake Edwards. | ||
Blake wrote the movie with Julie Andrews and Peter Sellers in mind, but Sellers had died, so Robert Preston replaced him as the gay impresario Toddy. | ||
Both Julie Andrews and Lesley Ann Warren (Norma Cassidy) starred as Cinderella in TV productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. | ||
Julie Andrews really is terrified of cockroaches. | ||
The cockroaches were in a kind of deep freeze coma. They were placed where necessary for the scene and heated with a hair dryer. The crew could only hope that they went in the right direction and no one knew quite where they went after filming of the scene was completed. | ||
The movie was made at Pinewood Studios, outside London, on nine sound stages. | ||
The young man who says Victor is "divine" at rehearsal is Blake Edwards' son and Julie Andrews' stepson, Geoffrey Edwards. | ||
Robert Preston did the final musical number in one take. | ||
Director Blake Edwards admitted in an interview that he "chickened out", and added the scene in which King Marchand (James Garner) discovers that Victoria (Julie Andrews) is indeed a woman. Originally he was to fall in love with Victoria before he was sure about her gender, hence his line "I don't care if you are a man" before he kisses her. | ||
Victor/Victoria was a very deserved success on its opening in April 1982 and garnered a total of seven Academy Award nominations. | ||
At the time the movie was coming out, Julie was named Woman of the Year by Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Club. In accepting the award, a trophy in the form of a pot, she asked, "Is it all right if I throw up in it?" |