Leslie Ann Warren recalls working with two Oklahomans on 'Victor Victoria'
BY GENE TRIPLETT
Lesley Ann Warren has a picture of herself in bed with James Garner.
How’s that for a big red-ink headline on a tabloid cover?
But don’t start spreading lurid gossip. The photo on Warren’s office wall was taken during the filming of the gender-bending musical comedy “Victor Victoria.” And the two are laughing
uproariously at something off-camera.
The source of their amusement is Blake Edwards, who wrote and directed the film.
“And it’s just the greatest picture because that’s what it was like to work together on-set,” Warren said of the two Oklahoma natives during a recent phone interview from her home in Sherman Oaks, Calif.
The actress was doing publicity for the recent DVD release of the 1982 comedy, which stars Edwards’ wife, Julie Andrews, as Victoria, an out-of-work and impoverished singer struggling to survive in Depression-era Paris.
Robert Preston plays a middle-age gay performer who takes her under his wing and concocts a scheme to get her work by passing her off as a man who performs as a female impersonator.
Warren gives an Oscar-nominated performance as King’s ditzy blond moll Norma, who is insanely jealous and out to get even with everyone.
“My opinion is that it completely stands the test of time,” Warren said of the film. “It’s a timeless classic, sort of brilliant in a way, a visionary movie. It deals with gender issues and gender identity, way before its time, in a way that was subtle but clear.”
Working with Edwards
Warren said she took the role in “Victor Victoria” mainly to work with the Tulsa-born writer-director, who had adapted the screenplay from a 1933 script by German filmmaker Reinhold Schunzel.
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