MEMBERS OF A DYNASTY (Part 1) Angelina Jolie

MEMBERS OF A DYNASTY (Part 1)

Angelina Jolie plays Maria Callas

by Norman Warwick

Angelina Jolie is the first of two stars we feature in sidetacks & detours this week, the other being Martha Wainwright, who is part of an acting and musical dynasty.

Angelina Jolie is an American actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian. The recipient of numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a Tony Award and three Golden Globe Awards, she has been named Hollywood’s highest-paid actress multiple times.

I have followed her career from a distance ever since I learned that her close family includes one of my favourite songwriters, Chip Taylor.

He is the songwriter  responsible for one of the most famous songs to come out of the 1960s—The Troggs’ 1966 hit “Wild Thing,” which was famously covered in 1967 by Jimi Hendrix. His other big hits include Merrilee Rush’s 1968 “Angel In The Morning” (also covered by Juice Newton), The Hollies “I Can’t Let Go” (1966, also notably covered by Evie Sands and Linda Ronstadt) and Janis Joplin’s “Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)” (1969). His songs have also been recorded by such luminaries as Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield and Frank Sinatra, with Norway’s premier folk singer Paal Flaata recording an entire album of Taylor songs, Wait by the Fire, and taking it to his country’s Top 10 and a Norwegian Grammy nomination.

Taylor was born James Wesley Voight in Yonkers, N.Y., on March 21, 1940. His older brother is the Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight (shown right) in Midnight Cowboy, with Dustin Hoffman,

Voight’s Oscar-winning daughter Angelina Jolie is Taylor’s niece, and a second older brother, Barry Voight, is an award-winning volcanologist and engineer in his own right. After a failed attempt as a professional golfer, Taylor commenced a career in music, writing songs by himself and with others including Brill Building session player Al Gorgoni—with whom he recorded in the duo Just Us and notched a hit in 1966 with “I Can’t Grow Peaches on a Cherry Tree” with Billy Vera (they co-wrote “Storybook Children,” which Vera recorded with gospel singer Judy Clay in 1967 as the first major label interracial duo) and Jerry Ragovoy, with whom he wrote the Janis Joplin hit “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder).” Other artists covering Taylor songs have included Willie Nelson, Johnny Tillotson, Barbara Lewis, The Pozo Seco Singers, Jackie DeShannon, Lita Ford, American Breed, Lorraine Ellison, Bobby Fuller Four, Marshall Crenshaw, The Fleetwoods, Waylon Jennings, Bobby Bare, Emmylou Harris and Anne Murray.

Taylor has also maintained a successful recording career, after recording as Wes Voight for King Records in the late 1950s, and later as Chip Taylor for Warner Bros., Columbia and Capitol–taking a break in the mid-‘70s for a successful stint as a professional gambler (he specialized in blackjack and horse-racing). He appeared in the 1980 film Melvin and Howard before relaunching his music career three years later with singer/violinist Carrie Rodriguez, with whom he recorded and performed through much of the next decade. He also performed with other artists including Robbie Fulks, John Platania and Kendel Carson.

In 2007, Taylor launched his independent label Train Wreck Records, for which he recorded the 2011 Grammy-nominated autobiographical album Yonkers, NY. His 2011 children’s album Golden Kids Rules featured his three granddaughters.

We have, of course, featured Chip Taylor´s work on these pages many times over the last five years, and no doubt either I, or Peter Pearson our official Americana correspondent, will continue to do so.

For now, though, let´s look at this latest step in Angelina Jolie´s career. She is shown left playing Maria Callas in a new role.

“Should I call you Maria or La Callas?” So opens the official trailer, see below, for Pablo Larrain´s Maria,  a biopic about opera singer Maria Callas, one of the world’s most renowned opera singers. We will feature Maria Callas in an article scheduled for December.

Following Jackie (2016) and Spencer (2021), Maria will serve as the third and final instalment of Larraín’s trilogy of films about iconic women of the 20th century.

The trailer dances between scenes of Callas in her old age gliding through her lavish apartment and black and white sequences of a younger Callas performing on stage. This push and pull between Callas the performer and Callas the woman will provide the central focus for this film, and is captured by an interviewer off-screen who dares to ask about Callas’ life away from the stage. A quiet but resolute Callas responds “There is no life away from the stage.”

After Jolie spent seven months training as an opera singer, a blend of her voice and recordings of Callas’ actual singing voice has been used for film, but the trailer holds off on revealing the final result. Instead, Jolie’s voice performance and stage performances are kept separate as we are first offered glimpses of the actress in full Callas getup on stage, before being graced with the sound of Callas singing at the end of the trailer. Though Jolie has in recent years stepped back from Hollywood to focus on her humanitarian projects, it is entirely possible that this film will garner the actress her second Academy Award for her performance as the glamorous singer.

This film will mark Jolie’s return to cinema after her turn in Marvel’s Eternals (2021), and it’s fair to say that Maria will be a much more introspective affair. Sweeping scenery and shots of Jolie as Callas captured against the backdrop of Paris showcase the artful skill of cinematographer Edward Lachman, and although much has been said about Larraín’s choice to make biopics about women who were as famous for their tumultuous personal lives as they were for their careers, in this film, he seems determined to give agency to the tortured singer. Though the film may not focus on one specific event as his previous two biopics did,  Maria promises to place Callas in control of her own narrative.

Maria will be in select theaters on Nov. 27, 2024, before streaming on Netflix on Dec. 11.