Lamentations

The other day, I posted a video here of Cloris Leachman performing a wonderful rendition of "Adelaide's Lament" from Guys and Dolls.  I noted that for my taste it was one of the best renditions of the song other than Vivian Blaine's original version because pretty much everyone else simply does a copy of Vivian Blaine.  Leachman, on the other hand, gave her own interpretation that  was just spot-on right, subtle and funny and correct.

I thought it would be nice to see the original, as well.  And to be clear, Vivian Blaine is wonderful -- she created the role on Broadway and was so famous for it that he repeated it in the movie.  She's big and brassy in the role with a very heavy, over-the-top New York accent -- but she was the first, and that's what they wanted.  And being first, there's a borderline matter-of-fact naturalness to it.  The others, as I said, are just copying her.

This is what they're copying --
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And I thought I'd post a bonus.  Not exactly to prove a point -- since I'd have to post several dozen videos -- but to confirm what I'm talking about...and to prove a reply I made.  Reader Douglass Abramson sent a comment how good he thought Cloris Leachman was in the video and wondered if Faith Prince had ever seen it, and had perhaps patterned some of her own performance of it when she did the role of Adelaide in the 1992 Broadway revival.  I replied that no, I doubted that Prince had seen the video, and also she was doing Vivian Blaine.  I said I was planning to post Vivian Blaine tonight, so let's also toss in Faith Prince.

This is what I mean by -- everyone does Vivian Blaine.  And Faith Prince absolutely is.

(Fun Fact: For those who've watched the NBC series Zoey's Extraordinary's Playlist, the actor who played the father, Peter Gallagher, starred in this revival as Skye Masterston.  And the actor who played Nathan Detroit -- the man that Adelaide is long-engaged to who she's singing about -- was Nathan Lane.)