Fresh Air - Andrew Scott On 'Ripley,' 'Fleabag' & More

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

Andrew Scott (best known as "hot priest" from Fleabag) plays con artist Tom Ripley in the Netflix adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley. He says his job is to advocate for his characters, not judge them. He spoke with Terry Gross about finding soul in comedy and lightness in drama. Also, Lloyd Schwartz shares a little-known history of "soundies."Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Like everyone who introduces my guest, I'll start by telling you that he's famous as the hot priest in the award-winning comedy series Fleabag. That priest is torn between his vow of celibacy and his love for a woman who loves him. It was a lot more than Andrew Scott's looks that made him a standout. He is a magnetic and subtle actor, whether his character is delightful or a sociopath. Scott first became known in the U.S. for his role in the British series Sherlock, which starred Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Andrew Scott as his nemesis Moriarty. A famous film you probably

don't remember him in is Steven Spielberg's World War II film Saving Private Ryan, where Scott played the role of Soldier on the Beach, one of the many soldiers on the beach in the film, who landed on the Normandy beach on D-Day. Scott returned to World War II with Steven Spielberg in the series Band of Brothers. After doing a share of suffering in World War II stories, he played a burned-out, cynical, wisecracking lieutenant in the World War I film 1917. Recently, he won British and American acting awards, including a National Society of Film Critics Award for his role in the very quiet film All of Us Strangers about a gay man who shut down his emotions. Now he stars in

a new Netflix series called Ripley, which is an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley. He plays Tom Ripley, a con man with no conscience. I think it would be fair to call him a sociopath. After surviving financially on small-time scams, he lands a bigger one when a wealthy man, Mr. Greenleaf, tracks him down with a proposition involving his son, Dickie. Mr. Greenleaf was told that Dickie proposition involving his son, Dickie. Mr. Greenleaf was

told that Dickie and Tom Ripley were friends in college. Mr. Greenleaf pays Ripley to go to Italy, where his son has been living with his girlfriend. The mission Ripley is given is to convince Dickie to return home to the U.S. Of course, Ripley accepts the offer, but when he meets Dickie and his girlfriend and looks at Dickie's luxurious home across from the beach, the art on the walls, the fine watches, the elegant clothes in the closet, he wants that life. So he plots a way to impersonate Dickie and claim the riches and the lifestyle for himself. In this scene, Ripley is alone in Dickie's home, trying on Dickie's clothes, and he's pleased to find they fit well, and he looks quite good in them. He's been posing in the mirror, trying to get Dickie's look and his voice. Now he's sitting on the edge of Dickie's bed, pretending to be

Dickie, breaking up with Dickie's girlfriend, Marge. Marge, I'm sorry, but you've got to understand, I don't love you. We're friends. That's all. Come on, don't... Don't cry. That's not going to work, Marge. Stop it.

Because you're interfering with Tom and me. No, no, no, no. It's not like that. It's not that. We're not that. No, there's a bond between us. Can you understand that? Or are you just going to keep making accusations?

Can you understand anything? Come on, Marge. It's not that. Andrew Scott, welcome to Fresh Air. You are so terrific. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Pleasure to be here, Terry. What did you need to know about the mind of Tom Ripley to play him?

I mean, is he desperate for money? Is he a sociopath? Do you have to think about what his motivation is? I did a little. I found all the words like sociopath and psychopath and monster, evil, villain, all those things sort of largely unhelpful. And really I just kind of thought about the character in stages and like a lot of Shakespearean characters,

when they say when you play a Shakespearean king or something, you don't play the king, everybody else plays the king. So everybody's allowed to be as frightened and intimidated by Tom as they like and to diagnose him in whatever way they see fit. But for me, I think your first job is to sort of advocate for the character and try not to judge them. So I try not to label him too much. And actually a lot of the challenge is to sort of unlearn the stuff we might know

from the character's reputation, you know, to yank it back from the possession that the audience sort of has of him. You mean from the previous film adaptation or from the book? Yeah, the film adaptations and to sort of think, okay, well, what do I read when I read these scripts? The scripts were really extraordinary and, you know, it's an eight eight hour adaptation of the novel so we have a sort of very particular opportunity in this one to spend an inordinate amount

of time with a singular character an opportunity that you don't normally get in television where you spend so much time with one one character usually

in television it's maybe a couple or a family or a hospital or a police department or whatever your eyes are so interesting in this series because sometimes they're, you know, a little comical or, um, but sometimes they are, and sometimes they're kind of threatening and other times they're just blank. Like there's nothing going on. Yeah. Like they're dead and there's nothing going on behind them. And it strikes me that that must be hard to achieve since you're not dead inside. Yes.

You have a conscience. Can you talk a little bit about going into that like dead inside blank state? So it's not necessarily that you would be playing nothing. And I think what's interesting about Tom Ripley is that we're watching this very brilliant person think. And I think that's a great pleasure for an audience to watch a character, particularly an intelligent character, use his brain in a very particular way. And to watch him make mistakes and to watch him go through all those those stages and so a little bit like what you're talking about that blankness that um might um exist in the

audience's mind is actually just in the audience's mind and not necessarily a blankness that i'm that i'm you know consciously trying to conjure up you know um and so i find that really interesting the audience participation in performance. And I think some of the most interesting performances are where you invite the audience into a kind of complicity with you, you know, and they have to do a little bit of work. And conversely, the kind of less satisfying performances

are ones where you think, oh my God, we're being spoon-fed everything here and we're left in absolutely no doubt as to what we should be thinking. So you're playing Tom Ripley, somebody who's hiding his real identity and assuming the identity of others. So he's always hiding who he is. You must identify with that and why as an actor

because you're always playing somebody else. But also Patricia Highsmith, who wrote the novel that ripley is adapted from she was a lesbian and had to hide that because when she was writing like you couldn't be out there's no way yeah and you grew up in in dublin and i think you were you were alive when homosexuality was against the law. So she knew stuff about hiding. You knew stuff about hiding your identity or you knew people who probably had to hide their identity. So do you feel that sense of hiddenness in the portrayal? Yeah, I do. I absolutely do.

She's definitely talking about murky times in society and a lot of this stuff is coded and there's certainly stuff that she can't speak explicitly about and I think she uses Tom Ripley as her sort of imp

she really adored the character and so yeah I do understand that feeling of hiding there's something about this character that to me is quite elusive and possibly just secretive, even to himself. Yeah, definitely. It seems like he's definitely secretive to himself. Yeah. There are so many of us, and I think this is the reason why the character is so enduring, that are strangers to ourselves, you know, that we do things that aren't necessarily murderous,

but that we do things we think, I have absolutely no idea where that came from, or there's parts of us that are mysterious to ourselves. And I think that's true of Tom. He certainly works as a con artist, and I think he's fluid. He's a kind of fluid character and he certainly isn't a natural born killer and he certainly isn't a natural murderer. He doesn't like blood. He's invited to go to this with this task. It's not something that he seeks out himself.

But to me, I think a lot of what she's talking about is class. You know, we see this very talented, isolated man who has been given no access to any of the beautiful things in life, despite being extremely gifted. And he lives in a rat-filled boarding house in the Lower East Side. And then he's transplanted to a beautiful country where these very entitled people with half the talent that he has are exposed to everything. And I think a sort of rage emerges in him that he's hitherto sort of unaware of. And I think it also might unearth a sort of sexuality within him, possibly, that he's uncomfortable with and an envy and a kind of passion. The film is shot in black and white, and it's really exquisite.

Like every shot could be a beautiful still photograph if you just stopped it and looked at the frame. And I'm wondering what it was like to shoot that way because just setting up the lighting and the composition, it's so carefully and artfully done. So did that mean a lot of time waiting for you? It absolutely did. Yeah.

Yeah, it did. And did you have to be aware of exactly how the lighting was so the shadows would fall exactly right? To a certain extent. I certainly knew that Steve Zalian, our director, was very concerned with how the imagery looked. And he was very fastidious about that. So, yeah, it did involve a lot of waiting around. And one of the challenges of the character is, of course, that he's isolated. And, you know, we shot it towards the end of the pandemic. And I certainly think that the atmosphere, you know, on the set and in the world at the time definitely permeated the feeling that I had in the process and probably in the performance to some degree.

So you may be tired of talking about your role in Fleabag as a priest. No, not at all. Okay. As a priest torn between your commitment to the priesthood and your love for the main character, the woman nicknamed Fleabag, torn between your commitment to celibacy and your own sexual desire. And, you know, it stars Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who also created and wrote it. And she plays a single woman who really loves sex and has had a lot of partners, but isn't really in love until she meets you. And you're a priest who performs the ceremony for Fleabag's father's second marriage. She falls in love with you. You're drawn to her. But you're a priest. You become good friends. And she started to hope that you'll leave the

priesthood and be with her. And I want to play a scene in which she's visiting you at the parish in the evening, and the scene starts inside and then moves outside. So we just did a bit of editing to edit together those two parts of the scene. So let's hear that. Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Fleabag speaks first. So I read your book. Okay, great. Well, it's got some great twists.

True. I couldn't help but notice just one or two little inconsistencies. Okay, sure. So the world was made in seven days, and on the first day, light came, and then a few days later, the sun came. Yeah, that's ridiculous.

You believe that? It's not fact. It's poetry. It's moral code. It's for interpretation to help us work out God's plan for us. What's God's plan for you? I believe God meant for me to love people in a different way. I believe I'm supposed to love people as a father. We can arrange that. A father of many.

I'll go up to three. It's not going to happen. Two then. Okay, two. Do you think I should become a Catholic? No, don't do that. I like that you believe in a meaningless existence. And you're good for me.

You make me question my faith. And? I've never felt closer to God. That's Phoebe Waller-Bridge and my guest, Andrew Scott. That's such a great role and such a great performance. Did you ever know a young priest as attractive as you were? That's very kind and also impossible to answer. Yeah, no, I completely adore Phoebe.

Well, wait, let's not avoid the question here. We'll take out the comparison to you so you don't have to worry about being humble here. But did you ever know a young, very attractive priest? No, no. The priests that I knew were not young or attractive. Right. You were raised Catholic in Dublin. What was the role of the church in your life?

Well, I think it was a huge role in my life growing up. The culture is based on the Catholic Church. Ireland is a small country. I was at a Jesuit school. I'm not a practicing Catholic anymore, but certainly the culture around Catholicism is one that is very hard to dispel. And parts of it are wonderful.

I think the sort of focus on community within the Catholic Church is really wonderful. And there's also, of course, the, you know, the huge amount of corruption and abuse that happened when I was growing up in the 90s. I remember, you know, driving to school. My father would drive me to school in the mornings and we would listen to the news in the morning.

And, you know, my very strong memory is of just a whole litany of abuse cases within the Catholic Church just coming out every morning. And, you know, my very strong memory is of just a whole litany of abuse cases within the Catholic Church just coming out every morning. Sexual abuse? Sexual abuse and not just sexual abuse, but infidelity within marriages and marriages where people would be, you know, having affairs with priests and, you know, but mainly sexual abuse. Were you really angry with the church for having so many hypocrites in positions of religious power? You know, you talk about the priests who were accused of sexual abuse and, you know, infidelity and, you know, entering other people's marriages.

And you're gay. I don't know how old you are when you realize that, maybe all your life. But like I said, in the Republic of Ireland, being gay was against the law until I think 1993. I think that's when it was repealed. And the church condemned it. And yet you have these priests, you know, abusing boys and having affairs with women and men probably. So how did you fit all these complicated feelings into your character of the priest in Fleabag? And it's a comedic role too, as we could hear from the scene,

the scene that we played. And he's wrestling with the natural sexual desire that people have and love. Yeah, physical expressions of love too. So it's not the abstinence that I have the problem with, it's the silence around the abstinence and the way that people in a position of power silence people who want to be able to talk about that. And so the reason that I found that character so cathartic

is that when I first had the conversation with Phoebe, I don't want to play a sort of stereotype of somebody who is extreme in that way. This is a human being. I think that's why we like that character, because he does have a faith. I think it's a wonderful thing to be able to have romantic feelings and to also have faith and to be able to talk about the human struggle. And so I love the fact that this quite radical sexual kind of risque series has at its center a real addressing for young people of what faith is, because I think there's a real gap for people of my generation who have been let down by the church and feel like it be wonderful for them if they were made feel welcome. And I think that's perhaps why Fleabag appealed to so many people, because it wasn't cynical.

I think we tried to talk about religion in, of course, a humorous way, but also in a way that isn't just too judgmental of the Catholic Church. Actually, this is a person who really is struggling and is a human being. And I love the fact that he questions his faith, but constantly stays with it. Yes, exactly. And that it's okay to question it. Absolutely. Like if your belief is deep enough,

it's okay to challenge it and question it and remain committed. Yes, exactly, remain committed. Exactly, that to see that struggle, like in any relationship, in a marriage, you think, this is tough. This relationship is hard. How do I keep it going? How do I talk about it? It's not just blind devotion the whole time.

In any relationship, you question it. And it's how you approach those crises that makes us honorable and courageous. And that's a wonderful thing to be able to convey and also, of course, just to just address. Did any priests give you feedback on your role in Fleabag? Yeah, they did, actually. I had really, really positive feedback from priests. I think because they, like all of us, like to see themselves represented in a sort of fair way and that they're not just these pious, flawless people. I think most of the feedback I got was really, really wonderful.

Let's take a short break here and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Andrew Scott. He stars in the new Netflix series, Ripley. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. Hi there, it's me, Anne-Marie Baldonado, here to tell you about our latest Fresh Air Plus bonus episode. We were going down the highway, we were somewhere in the south, and there was just pandemonium in the car.

My sister and I just had a fit. We really had to pull over and stop the car and settle down. Oh my God, it's Sam, it's Sam. Yes, that's the queen of soul herself, the late Aretha Franklin, talking about her friendship with Sam Cooke. You can hear more of that interview and get all of our episodes sponsor-free by joining Fresh Air Plus for yourself at plus.npr.org. I want to ask you about your recent film, All of Us Strangers, in which you play a screenwriter in London living in a new high-rise building. And there's only one other unit that seems to have anyone living in it. So it's this shiny and eerily empty new building.

The other resident, played by Paul Meskel, turns out to be gay, like your character, and you develop an intimate relationship. At the same time, you return to the town where you were raised, and the people who you meet there are your parents, but we, the audience, don't know that immediately, because they're the same age you are. Once we realize, wait, that's his parents, like, I was thinking, like, this is terrible casting. The parents are the same age as the son. What went wrong here? But then you realize the parents were in a car accident when your character was 11 years old. And you've gone back either in your mind or physically to talking with them and trying to bridge the gap of the man you've become, the screenwriter, the man who is gay with the child who they knew

and all the things you couldn't tell them and couldn't talk about then and are just dying to tell them now. Having the conversations you always wished you'd had had they been alive. Are your parents still alive? My mother died three weeks ago. Oh, no, I'm so sorry. Thank you. Are you okay?

I'm okay now. As we're speaking, I'm okay. Oh, I'm so sorry. I was going to ask you, and I'm not sure if this is anything you'd care to talk about, knowing now what I know. If you, as you were playing that, wanted to have conversations with your parents that you never had

and now I'm hoping that you had the conversations. I feel very lucky that I feel that there was nothing that I needed to say to my mum or I feel there was nothing that I needed to say to my mum, or I feel there was nothing that she needed to say to me that was left unsaid, so I feel very grateful for that. Is your father still alive? Yeah, yeah.

And is he okay? My father's okay. All right. One of the things about playing this role, it's one of the films in which you show your ability to be silent and still convey a lot. I timed it. There's about 14 minutes where the camera is mostly on you

and on your face or you're walking, and you don't say a word for like 14 minutes wow is it really i think that's really fascinating for for audiences to watch i think audiences love to to watch characters think and feel and um you know so much of what we say is uh less important than what we convey and that's one of the things I love about acting is that what you say accounts for a certain amount of things. But actually a lot of the time we're saying things while we're feeling some other things. That's really representative, I think,

of the way human beings behave. That's a really good point, yeah. Yeah, it's sort of what happens a lot. It's like it's point. Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of, that's what happens a lot. It's like, it's, it's, it's just the way we are. One of my favorite lines in the movie is actually said by Paul Maskell, who says, um, uh, I was a fat kid and when you're fat, people don't ask why you don't have a girlfriend. And I thought like, oh, that gets you so much. Um, yeah, yeah. It's brilliant. It's so truthful. The screenplay was so incredibly truthful.

And I love the fact that it's sort of, that film has really, I love the fact that the way films are distributed now that they get to a really, really wide audience

and it's really affected so many different types of people because everybody has a relationship with their parents, whether their parents are alive or not, or whether they are parents themselves. Everybody at some point has a relationship with them, whether they're in their lives or not, or whether they're a parent or not.

And I think most people have a relationship with falling in love and so I love the fact that that film, because it's sort of unusual, there's a dreamlike

quality to it, sort of is able to tap into a huge swathes of different experiences. I think it's really special,

that film. We need to take a short break, so let me reintroduce you. My guest is Andrew Scott. He stars as Tom Ripley in the new Netflix adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley. The series is called Ripley. He played the priest in the series Fleabag. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. I think you first became known in the U.S. in Sherlock, the BBC series that played in the U.S. as well, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and you as his nemesis, Moriarty.

So I want to play a scene from season one, and this is the first scene where Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty meet face to face. And Moriarty has lured Sherlock to rescue his friend Watson, who's been outfitted with an explosive vest. So Sherlock is pointing a gun at you during this entire exchange. And your character, Moriarty, speaks first. Do you know what happens if you don't leave me alone, Sherlock? To you. Oh, let me guess. I get killed. Kill you? No, don't be obvious. I mean, I'm going to kill you anyway someday.

I don't want to rush it, though. I'm saving it up for something special. No, no, no, no, no. If you don't stop prying, I'll burn you. I will burn the heart out of you. I have been reliably informed that I don't have one.

But we both know that's not quite true. Well, I'd better be off. Well, it's so nice to have had a proper chat. What if I was to shoot you now? Right now? Then you could cherish the look of surprise on my face. Because I'd be surprised, Sherlock, really I would. And just a teensy bit... disappointed.

And of course you wouldn't be able to cherish it for very long. Ciao, Sherlock Holmes Catch you Later No you won't So you play Moriarty Big and and smirky, sinister and funny. What was your audition like? My audition was incredibly fun.

Just the day before, I knew that they were auditioning people to play Moriarty. And their original idea was that this character would appear almost like just an image. And it would say something like, hello, Sherlocklock and that would be the end of the series um but then when they realized that lots of actors coming into audition just saying hello sherlock doesn't give them much of an idea of of of the actor's range um you know for future series if they cast this actor so they um uh quickly wrote stephen moffat the writer quickly wrote that scene um which eventually appeared um as the scene we've just listened to as an audition scene for for actors to read when the in the audition and they they sent it maybe

i don't know like the night before the audition. And I thought, wow, this is really fun. And I was aware that, um, I didn't look like a villain at the time. I had quite a sort of, you know, boyish face and stuff. And so I took great, great pleasure in, in frightening them. And I knew in the audition that, that, uh, they were amused, but also that they were scared. Were you able to tap into a place in yourself that you thought could scare people? Yeah, yeah, I was. I feel like one of the things that I feel quite fortunate about is that I feel quite near my emotions.

I feel that's stood me in good stead as an actor. I feel like it's enormously, I don't know, it feels healthy to me to be able to access that part of you but not really do any harm, you know. Yeah, it's a funny thing, isn't it, to be an actor? Yeah, yeah. I want to move on to Hamlet.

You got an Olivier Award, I think, right, for your portrayal? I might have, yeah. You might have, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How am I supposed to know if you don't know? Yeah, well, I don't know. How am I supposed to know if you don't know? Well, anyways, you were acclaimed yeah okay yeah people liked it yeah so um you've spoken about how you wanted to make the language understandable so often especially for americans who sometimes

have to work hard just to grasp a brit accent when spoken quickly or spoken with a regional British accent. And of course, so much of the language in Shakespeare is language that we no longer use. It's archaic. But you really wanted to make every word understandable. So I went on YouTube to see if I could find anything. And I found you doing part of the to be or not to be soliloquy which is of course the most famous part and it was so interesting because you know hamlet is really like thinking through like should i live or should i end my life i don't know um and what's the worst that can happen if i die what would that be, of course, he's using very elevated poetic language to say all of that. But you say it, like, really slowly.

There are so many, like, long pauses in between, for instance, to be, long pause, or not to be. And on the one hand, I felt like, wow, that's a lot of pauses. And on the other hand, I felt like, well, every word is ringing out. And I'm kind of hearing things I hadn't heard before. So can you describe your thoughts about those pauses and why you took them and where you took them? I suppose the thing about the pauses is that he's thinking, am I going to live or am I going to die? And we're seeing that live. And, you know, your job is to not play the famous speech. Your job is to just, that speech wasn't written to be famous,

it was just written to be authentic. And this is somebody who's thinking, am I going to do this? Or am I not going to do this? And nobody's watching him. So why wouldn't he take his time? You know, a lot of the language is archaic, but a lot of words that we still use today were invented by Shakespeare. So I have this real passion about Shakespeare that it shouldn't be kidnapped by academics. It's something that's very actable. And for young actors, if you really examine it and you're not intimidated and you're not told this isn't for you then actually it should be really really accessible and um uh you may not understand every single word but in the same way you may not understand or get every word in a rap song you understand that there's a musicality to it and there's a feeling that you have to get and that that could be

witty or it could be um contemplative or it could be whatever it is um and it's incredibly actable and also hamlet is incredibly funny and um so it was just like with all things is just to be able to to ignore the famousness of the play in fact we had a thing in rehearsal called the famous play buzzer where you're like are we just doing this just because everybody knows this is what you would do like hamlet's father appears to him as a ghost at the beginning of the story. And we don't know, we should unlearn the fact that we don't know that that character could be in that character who only appears fleetingly.

But we know that probably because we know the play so well, that actually he just appears to him and then he goes for the majority of the play. But for a 16-year-old who's watching it, they don't know that this character isn't going to be by his side for the rest of the, rest of the, um, rest of the show. So you have to unlearn what you already know about the famousness of the play in the same way you have to unlearn all the stuff that you know about Tom

Ripley and, or James Moriarty or any, anything that, you know, um, you know, uh, you're, when you're reinterpreting, you know, a famous story. So I found all that really interesting. And all the stuff about Hamlet to me is fascinating because people say, oh, he's the dark prince and he's wearing, you know, the inky black cloak and blah, blah, blah. But actually, this is just a guy, which I, you know which I very much understand at the moment, which is a guy who's in mourning. His father has died very, very recently. So the question is that you don't drown that character in just, oh, he's just a dark, depressing guy. Where was his lightness?

And so I feel like you always have to go towards the lightness when you're dealing with tragedy. And a little bit like Fleabag, when you're dealing with comedy, you have to look for the soul. And that's what I think the great art, or certainly the art that I am interested in, has a bit of both. Because that's the way we are as human beings. We like a bit of both. We laugh on the saddest day of our life. And we cry in the middle of a life and we cry, you know, in the middle of a brunch when we don't think we're going to.

It's always within us all the time, the potential to go in either direction. Andrew Scott, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. And, you know, your face changes from role to role. Can you pass unrecognized on the street? I can, yeah.

Yeah, I can. Sometimes. Right, sometimes. Do you use any kind of disguise? It depends. I'm very lucky. I can walk the streets pretty easily. Yeah, we'll see how long that lasts.

I think we've been saying that for a while, so hopefully I'll be able to duck and dive into the future. Well, congratulations on Ripley, and thank you so much for being with us. Thank you so much for having me. Andrew Scott stars in the new Netflix series Ripley, an adaptation

of the Patricia Highsmith novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. After we take a short break, the forerunner of music videos, soundies, three-minute music performances on film. There's a new collection of soundies from the 1940s. This is Fresh Air. Decades before there were music videos, there were soundies. In the 1940s, you could not only listen to your favorite bands and vocalists on records or the radio, but you could also watch musical numbers on a soundie. Fresh Air's classical music critic

Lord Schwartz guesses that unless you caught a soundie between feature films on Turner Classic Movies or one of them popped up on YouTube, you probably wouldn't know about them. But now you have a chance to see lots of them as collected on a four-disc Blu-ray set called Soundies, The Ultimate Collection, released by Kino Classics. Here's Lloyd's review. No one to talk with all by myself No one to walk with But I'm happy on the shelf A misbehavin' Savin' all my love for you

You fine rascal, you I know for certain The one I love I'm through with flirtin' It's you that I'm thinkin' of A misbehavin', saving all my love for you, for you, just you. Like Jack Horner, in a corner, don't go nowhere. What do I care? Your kisses, my dear, are worthwhile waiting for. Believe

me, dear. Fats Waller accompanied himself in his great song, Ain't Misbehavin', on recordings, on the radio, and in the movies. But the clip we just heard was actually the soundtrack of a soundie, one of the more than 1,800 three-minute musical films made in the 1940s, which you could watch in a bar or club when you dropped a dime into a panoram, a large jukebox with a screen. These soundies were a short-lived phenomenon that bridged the chronological gap between radio and television, but they presented a surprisingly complex image of American life, including race and gender. You can now sample them on a big new Blu-ray set called Soundy's The Ultimate Collection, intelligently curated by film historian Susan Delson. Many of the performers on Soundies were pop music royalty.

Duke Ellington and Count Basie, Cab Calloway and Gene Krupa, Anita O'Day, the Mills Brothers, and Sister Rosetta Tharp, a singer equally at home in gospel and hot jazz. Though most of the Soundies' musicians never became household names. But some of them were taking their baby steps toward future stardom. In a soundie called Aladdin from Staten Island, a handsome guitar player identified simply as Ricardo marked the very first screen appearance of leading man Ricardo Montalban. Nat King Cole, Spike Jonze, and 50s sitcom queen Gail Storm made soundies early in their careers. It's a trip watching a 24-year-old pianist with wavy hair and a broad smile named Walter Liberace racing his fleet fingers double time over a mirrored keyboard in Tiger Rag. The first African-American performer to appear in Soundies was a vivacious young singer and dancer named Dorothy Dandridge, whose hips, shoulders, and eyes seemed to move in many different directions at the same time.

A decade later, she became the first black artist to be nominated for an Oscar in a leading role. One of my favorite soundies features Dandridge and her loose-limbed singing and dancing partner, Paul White, in an irresistible number called A Zoot Suit. Soundies were a veritable encyclopedia of 40s lingo. I want a zoot suit with a wreath, pleat with a draper's shape, and a stuff cup to look sharp enough to see my Sunday gal.

I want a wreath sleeve with a ripe stripe and a dress vest with a glad plaid in the latest band to see my Sunday gal. I want to look keen so my dream will say you don't look like Saint Beau. So keen that she'll scream

ow! Here comes my walking rainbow. So make a suit, suit with a wreath, pleat with a drape, shape and a stuff cuff to look sharp enough

to see my Sunday gal. I want a brown gown with a zop top with a hip slip A laced waist in the sharpest tape to see my Sunday man I want a scat hat with a trim brim A zag bag with a rip zip to look plenty hip To see my Sunday Sam Yes, I want to look keen so my my dream will say, ain't I the lucky fella? So keen that he'll scream, baby, you sure look mella. Curator Susan Delson arranges this collection

into a variety of social activities, especially dancing and the war effort, and categories of music, including such bizarre hybrids as the hula rumba and cowboy calypso. Most soundies were made with white performers, but Delson readjusts the balance so that almost a quarter of the soundies here feature black performers. Soundies were largely ignored by Hollywood's strict production code, so some of them are delightfully raunchy. One of the rare soundies caught in the crosshairs of the censors was the 1941 Shoe Shiners and Headliners, from which eighteen seconds were cut from general release, but shown complete here. Two rows of dancers back to back, white women and black men, seemed to come a little too close to touching. In the end, soundies were a mixed bag. Low budgets were a serious limitation,

though also inspired surprising visual invention. Many soundies were purely war propaganda, singing commercials for war bonds or boosters for women in the workplace, ominous warnings against talking to spies, or racist jabs at our adversaries. But the best of them, like this one with Gene Krupa, Anita O'Day, and trumpeter Roy Eldridge,

are musical treasures. Hey, Joe. What do you mean, Joe? My name's Roy. Well, come here, Roy, and get groovy. You been uptown? No, I ain't been uptown, but I've been around., and get groovy. You been uptown? No, I ain't been uptown, but I've been around. You mean to say you ain't been uptown? No, I haven't been uptown. What's uptown?

Pleasure you're about And you feel like stepping out Oh, you've got to shout Let me off uptown If it's rhythm that you is called Who's on First? New and Selected Poems. He reviewed Soundies, the ultimate collection, released by Kino Classics. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality. We talk with Amanda Montel about her new book. She's a linguist known for her sense of humor and

for her books, Word Slut and Cultish, and her podcast, Sounds Like a Cult. I hope you'll join us. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. Anita, oh, Anita. Say, I feel something. What do you feel, Roy? The heat? No, it ain't the heat. It must be that uptown rhythm. Because I feel like blowing.

Well, blow, Roy, blow. Whoa! from NPR sponsor Grammarly. What if everyone at work were an expert communicator? Inbox numbers would drop, customer satisfaction scores would rise, and everyone would be more productive. That's what happens when you give Grammarly to your entire team. Grammarly is a secure AI writing partner that understands your business and can transform it through better communication.

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