The Toy Wife

The Toy Wife is not a porn movie from the seventies. It's a French-Italian coproduction originally called "Frou-Frou". Frou-Frou is a song composed by Henri Château in 1889. It was sung by Fréhel dans La Grande Illusion, and by Berthe Sylva among many others.






Naturally, such a film had to have the title song sung by main actress Dany Robin (who later worked with Alfred Hitchcock on Topaz). She does sing a few notes in a dialog-heavy scene. But later, when she is on the stage, her voice gets considerably better in quality. Has she worked hard for that? Of course not. She is simply dubbed by a wonderful singer called Lucie Dolène.

Lucie Dolène

You may not know her, but she was the French voice of Snow White in the Disney movie from 1962 to 2001, after-which a trial regarding royalties ended her relationship with the company and the voice was redubbed. Lucie has a solid fanbase and everyone over ten years old in France remembers her singing "Un jour mon Prince viendra" ("Some Day my Prince will come"). In a recent interview, she tells how she naively refused a 5 year contract at MGM offered by Joe Pasternak because she had already signed a stage operetta contract with Luis Mariano, a famous French star whose popularity never reached the USA.

Back to Frou-Frou now. After that song, Dany Robin's character sings two more songs composed especially for the film by Louiguy, a.k.a. Louis Guglielmi, who wrote Edith Piaf's "La Vie En Rose". Naturally, Lucie Dolène dubs again.

If the versions recorded for the film are spoiled by dialogs and sound effects, there is a single from 1955 with a discreet mention of the film on the cover (God forbid anyone should ruin Dany Robin's secret). On it, Lucie sings the songs with a new orchestration.
If prefer those of the film, but the record has a definite advantage: the song "Amoureuse" ("In Love") is complete. There it is:

If the second song "Laï Laï Laï Nicholas" is of any interest to you, let me know by leaving a message. If you wish, the DVD of the film is available in France.


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That's all for today, folks!