I respect your reasons! And hope you'll enjoy it when it gets streamed later.
Re: voices, in the special edition dvd of the 1961 movie I have, there are clips of undubbed footage showing the cast singing their past before the profession singers overdubbed them - which Natalie Wood especially was hurt by, since she had worked very hard to do right by Maria. The documentary intercuts both versions for Maria, Anita, Riff and Tony, and I had the impression that basically the actors were on a level of, say, the BTVS cast in Once More With Feeling (the musical episode), which is to say that while you wouldn't send them on a concert tour, they sing well and put a lot of character in their song interpretations. Now today the trend goes in the other direction - i.e. not hire professional singers but let the actors do it - which can go very wrong (again, Gerald Butler as the Phantom comes to mind, and I'm also not keen on Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd for reasons that have nothing to do with all the reveals in the last decade, it's because for this particular part, I do want someone on an operating level) - yet in general I think it's preferable if you have someone able to do both, the acting and the singing.
...which is yet another reason why I'm glad they gave "Somewhere" to Rita Moreno, who, after all, was dubbed in 1961 as well. She sings it beautifully.
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Re: voices, in the special edition dvd of the 1961 movie I have, there are clips of undubbed footage showing the cast singing their past before the profession singers overdubbed them - which Natalie Wood especially was hurt by, since she had worked very hard to do right by Maria. The documentary intercuts both versions for Maria, Anita, Riff and Tony, and I had the impression that basically the actors were on a level of, say, the BTVS cast in Once More With Feeling (the musical episode), which is to say that while you wouldn't send them on a concert tour, they sing well and put a lot of character in their song interpretations. Now today the trend goes in the other direction - i.e. not hire professional singers but let the actors do it - which can go very wrong (again, Gerald Butler as the Phantom comes to mind, and I'm also not keen on Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd for reasons that have nothing to do with all the reveals in the last decade, it's because for this particular part, I do want someone on an operating level) - yet in general I think it's preferable if you have someone able to do both, the acting and the singing.
...which is yet another reason why I'm glad they gave "Somewhere" to Rita Moreno, who, after all, was dubbed in 1961 as well. She sings it beautifully.