Victor Victoria **** (1982, Julie Andrews, Robert Preston, James Garner) – Classic Movie Review 1462

Writer-director Blake Edwards’s bubbly and witty 1982 gender-bender musical remake of a 1933 German comedy, Viktor und Viktoria, is huge vivacious fun. It provides an ideal vehicle for his wife Julie Andrews as a struggling female soprano who finds work playing a male female impersonator and soon becomes the talk of the town of 1934 Paris. Inspired by the material, Edwards makes it all sharp and sophisticated.

There were seven Oscar nominations, but only the one win – for Best Music, Original Song Score and Its Adaptation or Best Adaptation Score.

On sensational form, Andrews sparkles delightfully as Victoria Grant/ Count Victor Grazinski, and it doesn’t really matter that she never really looks like a man. Robert Preston is endearing and gives a tour de force as her gay chum Toddy, the compère of a nightclub who acts as Victoria’s manager, while James Garner is engaging as King Marchand, a bright Chicago gangster who has the hots for her.

The film is scored by Henry Mancini, with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse, with the vocal numbers presented as nightclub acts, with choreography by Paddy Stone. It was nominated for seven Oscars and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score for Mancini and Bricusse, though it is the performances (especially those of Oscar-nominated Best Actress Andrews and Best Supporting Actor Preston) and Edwards’s witty dialogue that are the film’s real triumphs. However, the Art Direction (Rodger Maus and Tim Hutchinson) Set Decoration (William Craig Smith, Harry Cordwell) and the Costume Design are special too, hence their Oscar nominations.

The film also co-stars Lesley Ann Warren, Alex Karras, Peter Arne, Graham Stark, Maria Charles, and John Rhys-Davies.

Also in the cast are Herb Tanney, Michael Robbins, Norman Chancer, David Gant, Malcolm Jamieson, John Cassady, Mike Tezcan, Christopher Good, Matyelok Gibbs, Jay Benedict, Olivier Pierre, Martin Rayner, George Silver, Joanna Dickens, Terence Skelton, Ina Skriver, Stuart Turton, Geoffrey Beevers, Sam Williams, Simon Chandler, Neil Cunningham, Vivienne Chandler, Bill Monks, Perry Davey, Elizabeth Vaughan, Paddy Ward, Tim Stern, George Lane Cooper, Peter Diamond, Geoffrey Edwards and Chrissy Monk.

It is written by Blake Edwards from the 1933 screenplay Viktor und Viktoria by Hans Hoemburg and Rheinhold Schünzel, shot by Dick Bush, produced by Blake Edwards and Tony Adams, scored by Henry Mancini and designed by Rodger Maus.

Viktor und Viktoria (1933) was also filmed by director Victor Saville as First a Girl starring Jessie Matthews in the UK in 1935.

Andrews, who watched the 1933 film to prepare for her role, went on to perform the part live in a stage musical version on Broadway in 1995 and there is a 1995 television film of the show.

Remembering James Garner.

James Garner, best known for his charming, wry anti-heroes in TV’s The Rockford Files and Maverick died on 19 July 2014, aged 86. He recovered from a quintuple heart bypass in 1998 but suffered a stroke in 2008.

His cinema roles include The Thrill of It All (1963), Move Over, Darling (1963), The Great Escape (1963), The Americanization of Emily (1964), Grand Prix (1966), Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969), Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971), Sunset, Victor Victoria (1982), Murphy’s Romance (1985) which earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination, Tank, Twilight (1997), Maverick (1994), My Fellow Americans (1996), Space Cowboys (2000), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and The Notebook (2004).

He received an Emmy nomination for best actor in TV’s Maverick in 1959 and won an Emmy as private investigator Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files in 1977.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1462

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