'Moonraker's Dolly'—Braces Or Not?

[Mythopoeika]

The most egregious product placement I've seen in a film was when Will Smith boasted about his 'vintage' JVC music system and his Reeboks in I, Robot.

Converse All Stars, please!

 

[Ermintruder]

Converse All Stars, please!

You've got sole, man.

(ps anyway, I think that in 'The Fresh Prince of Bel Air', at no point did Will Smith wear a dental brace. Unlike his daughter Willow.
pps And I found the movie "Seven Pounds" to be genuinely-upsetting, just as an aside. Two of my red lines....jellyfish and over-motivated organ donation.

 

[Vardoger]

In perhaps the strangest love affair in the series, Jaws meets Dolly in Rio after his failed attempt on Bond and Goodhead's lives. The complete opposite of Jaws, Dolly is a short blond girl with pigtails, glasses and braces.

http://www.universalexports.net/Movies/moonraker-cast.shtml

 

[CarlosTheDJ]

If she's got braces then she's not the complete opposite!

 

[Junopsis]

That's so funny, I'd have sworn she had braces too. At the same time, I vaguely recall seeing it once or twice after my initial viewing and expecting braces, and seeing none, so it might just be that it was so logical to have that as a sight gag that I expected...
I suppose I shouldn't be so happy at having my own 'false memory', but.

 

[kamalktk]

http://www.universalexports.net/Movies/moonraker-cast.shtml

In perhaps the strangest love affair in the series, Jaws meets Dolly in Rio after his failed attempt on Bond and Goodhead's lives. The complete opposite of Jaws, Dolly is a short blond girl with pigtails, glasses and braces.l

Pictured: A woman without braces

 

[EnolaGaia]

I would have thought the most reliable image evidence would be the publicity stills published back at the time of the film's original release.

I can find such stills showing the Jaws and Dolly characters (in character; in-scene or off-camera), but I can't find any trace of braces on Dolly in any of them (though in some Kiel is clearly seen to be wearing his own Jaws dental apparatus).

 

[Ermintruder]

I can find such stills showing the Jaws and Dolly characters (in character; in-scene or off-camera)

I'm very much hoping (since we know the vast amount of wide-ranging experience you have @EnolaGaia ) that you might happen to personally possess a relevant physical photograph or magazine cutting that is contemporary to the film's original release.

I'm intrigued as to the sheer quantity of Dolly/Jaws digitised images that are available via the Google search engine, and (whilst I'm unsure precisely where I'm going with this line of deductive unreasoning) I would be so utterly satisfied if somehow, somewhere, someone had a primary source of non-digitised encapsulated physicality that records this. And when I say 'this', I do mean frame content from the original 70mm cinematic cut, transposed onto (eg) a contemporary-for-era commercial release Super8/16mm home movie reel. Or a memorabilia cell from an original movie-theater pancake showreel.

Let's all remember....there are (internet, dammit, but....) references which appear to suggest the producers formally-considered Dolly having braces in the movie. I still wonder if it's possible that this was a function of the actress actually still wearing braces, on initial arrival at the set (so, an orthodontic fact) and her semi-coincidentally having had them removed by a company dentist after the relevant scenes were shot....whereupon the director has reshot scenes (perhaps at the behest of her management). And consequently there are two co-extant versions of the movie (one commonised version, and an earlier rarer version).

I still contend two main points: I do remember a time in western society (particularly in anglophonia) that the overt wearing of dental braces was associated very negatively, and suppressed at a visual/societal level. Braces became liberated as a quasi-fashion statement accessory, with a meta-sexual gaminity (cf spectacles/eyeglasses worn provocatively upon liberated librarians as opposed to being marks of Cain) thus attaining an inverse cachet just around (and after) the era within which this movie was first released. My assertion is, cinematographically, braces on Dolly were A Big Deal, directorially.

And: I still contend that the smile scene make insufficient storyboard sense just on a height differential basis. Their common bond, visually, was (brace yourself) their teeth.

 

[EnolaGaia]

I'm very much hoping (since we know the vast amount of wide-ranging experience you have @EnolaGaia ) that you might happen to personally possess a relevant physical photograph or magazine cutting that is contemporary to the film's original release. ...

No - I don't have a hardcopy. All the stills to which I refer are ones available on the 'Net. These are mostly scans from the publicity / fan publications (magazines, etc.) issued at the time of the film's release.

 

[kevinjwoods]

I wonder if the character had braces in the novelisation? I'm thinking it wasn't that unusual for novelisations to have slight or even not so slight differences from the movie (Pretty in Pink had an entirely different ending).

That may be how the idea got into many people's imagination.

Found my copy of the novelisation, will read it later to see how it describes dolly

 

[kevinjwoods]

Read it here is the entire description of Dolly in the novelisation

"a pretty girl in an astronauts uniform"

Nothing else not even a name she just appears, knocks on jaws's escape pod and then watches from his shoulder as Bond flies away.

 

[Peripart]

Nothing about helping him up from the wreckage of the cable car, then?

 

[kevinjwoods]

Nothing about helping him up from the wreckage of the cable car, then?

nope it just says the car with jaws in it crashed into the station, guess Dolly was introduced in a later draft than was used for the novel or he didn't like her and took her out of the novel.

 

[Zeke Newbold]

There's some great work above.

However, for the 42ndth time, let me restate what I am sure is the definitive solution to this puzzle!

The script initially demanded that Dolly wear braces (as a visual joke and entirely in keeping with the levity of the franchise at that time).The up and coming glamorous actress who was to play this part, however, was not happy wih sporting a full mouth of braces (or perhaps her agents were not). So they compromised: they put braces on her lower teeth only.

These are clearly visible on post 26(above). Either she is wearing braces on her lower teeth there or her lower teeth are weirdly discoloured - which is more likely?

The confusion has arisen because the braces would have been much more visible on the big screen and much less so on smaller screen formats (and perhaps something has been lost by conversion to digital too). So...no false memories, no intertwining of time-streams.... just a big screen versus smalll screen format issue.

Case closed. Or at least show me where I'm wrong!

 

[Ermintruder]

Case closed. Or at least show me where I'm wrong!

Apologies, I've now re-watched that HD Youtube link, and I do agree, there certainly does appear to be something odd about her lower teeth.

My screen-cap/greyscaled zoom shows it's much-more subtle than it should be, to have been so memorable for us that saw it originally on the big silver screen.

Is it possible that, as well as massive difference in resolution and lighting levels (movie versus video) might some frames have been cut just at that point (I mean during the telecine transfer)?

Lower jaw teeth-brace: hmm.. I wonder? Rarer than upper, and would probably foul with (and contribute to) an overbite splay. Has anyone ever had such a thing? Or seen one, kiss-up close?

 

[Belshazzar]

I think you're all clutching at straws. I wonder, instead of "Mandela Effect", if there should be a term to describe a phenomena where a mass of people can think they've seen something purely because it somehow makes more sense that it should have been played out that way? Yes, it seems somehow logical that Dolly should have smiled to reveal a mouthful of metal, but all evidence points to the contrary.
I've skimmed through magazines from the period which contain reviews and stills: Starburst, Starlog, etc. Looked at the trading cards released in conjunction with the film, and all photos of Dolly show her sans braces. Even Mad magazine, which would surely have taken the braces trope and run with it, have drawn Dolly without:

Mad magazine #213, March 1980

As for just lower braces... again, this is disputed by stills:

Even the actress, Blanche Ravalec, has commented: "No, Dolly has never worn the braces. It was never intended for that matter".

 

[JamesWhitehead]

the braces would have been much more visible on the big screen

Probably not. Real Film enthusiasts are fond of telling us that photographic emulsions are capable of storing much higher resolutions than digital scans have yet extracted but the prints delivered to average cinemas in the sixties and seventies were far from optimum quality. Cinemas - away from showpiece first-run houses - were also notorious for reducing the power of the lamps on the projectors. The image may have been big and impressive, compared to the tv of the time, but it did not resemble the HD we see today. Older critics frequently berate the companies for reducing grain on older pictures and rendering them more video-like.

 

[Ermintruder]

if there should be a term to describe a phenomena where a mass of people can think they've seen something purely because it somehow makes more sense that it should have been played out that way?

Perhaps that term might be meta-ostension...
http://www.ostension.org/whats_ostension.html

As two asides: does Jaws actually have braces, or is that metal inplanted teeth? Such that now perhaps neither are wearing braces??

But: am I interpreting the 'Mad' cartoon bubble comment above, made by Dolly, correctly? "I can see you now, coming home with a set of trains for the baby" (trains, as in 'train tracks' ie dental braces??).

 

[EnolaGaia]

I think you're all clutching at straws.

Agreed ...

I wonder, instead of "Mandela Effect", if there should be a term to describe a phenomena where a mass of people can think they've seen something purely because it somehow makes more sense that it should have been played out that way? Yes, it seems somehow logical that Dolly should have smiled to reveal a mouthful of metal, but all evidence points to the contrary.

In its most commonly encountered form "Mandela Effect" connotes a particular instance of collective misremembering in and of itself - i.e., an outcome - and nothing further regarding the cause(s) for that outcome. This lack of specificity with regard to causality leaves a hole into which folks have dumped all sorts of fanciful explanations (e.g., parallel universes).

I totally agree with your explanation for this particular "Dolly Braces Example of a Mandela Effect". However, your explanation isn't an alternative to the Mandela Effect per se - it's one of possibly many alternative explanations for the occurrence of the Mandela Effect in this instance.

Psychiatry's lexicon does have a specific term (confabulation) for unintentionally generating / maintaining falsifiable memories. This term, too, falls short of denoting a specific causal basis for its outcome.

 

[Swifty]

Someone should clearly put some CGI braces on Dolly now.

 

[Belshazzar]

Someone should clearly put some CGI braces on Dolly now.

I've been thinking this the whole time.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Someone should clearly put some CGI braces on Dolly now.

Wouldn't that make her look like a 1980s yuppie?

 

[Zeke Newbold]

I think you're all clutching at straws. I wonder, instead of "Mandela Effect", if there should be a term to describe a phenomena where a mass of people can think they've seen something purely because it somehow makes more sense that it should have been played out that way? Yes, it seems somehow logical that Dolly should have smiled to reveal a mouthful of metal, but all evidence points to the contrary.
I've skimmed through magazines from the period which contain reviews and stills: Starburst, Starlog, etc. Looked at the trading cards released in conjunction with the film, and all photos of Dolly show her sans braces. Even Mad magazine, which would surely have taken the braces trope and run with it, have drawn Dolly without:

Mad magazine #213, March 1980

As for just lower braces... again, this is disputed by stills:

Even the actress, Blanche Ravalec, has commented: "No, Dolly has never worn the braces. It was never intended for that matter".

I'm not entirely convinced. If you are right then how do you account for the discoloured lower teeth sported by Dolly in the posts above by both myself and Ermintrude? Did this glamour actress have bad teeth? How likely is that? As for `stills` these are often posed publicity shots and not direct pictures taken from the films : it is likely that such an actress would have removed her braces for such a publicity shot.

If you watch the scene again where Jaws and dolly meet there is very much a focus on their teeth: the light shines acrss Jaws's gnashers and, in response, Dolly slowly - very tentatively opens her mouth in response. It's all about dentures.

 

[Ermintruder]

it is likely that such an actress would have had her management ensure that the photo-lab removed her braces for such a publicity shot.

there is very much a focus on their teeth: the light shines acrss Jaws's gnashers and, in response, Dolly slowly - very tentatively opens her mouth in response

Precisely. The whole storyboard at that point screams TEETH

EDIT
What happens to old films? Is there a Library of Congress vault with huge piles of carefully-stacked reels? I mean in addition to ancient black&white classics

 

[Zeke Newbold]

I find the so called Mandela Effect - a terrible label which trivialises a great man's name btw -to be extremely fascinating but the vast majority of instances can be put down to corrections we make in our memories so that they fit into our schmema's of the world better: `meta-ostension` as mentioned above.

Most of them don't apply to me anyway, because they are drawn from American pop culture of which I have no memory of in the first place.

There are two that bug me a little bit though:

I am one of those who feels he can recall a famous and iconic colour portrait of Henry VIII holding a chicken or turkey drumstick, but no such scene has yet been unearthed:

mandelaeffect.com/henry-VIII-portrait-turkey-leg/

I also seem to harbour a dim but persistent memory (from the same period - my seventies childhood) of the word `dilemma` being an awkward and counterintuitive word to spell and having a silent `n` in it somewhere - more like `dilemna`. (I'm an English language teacher and not a lexical dumbo. I know how the word is spelt - and know that the alternate spelling doesn't make any sense - but it's a memory I seem to share with many others).

 

[JamesWhitehead]

As that page mentions, the scene of Henry VIII gorging himself on a whole chicken arrives with the Charles Laughton film. Many complain that it was not in colour and they never saw it. Fair enough but it was such a celebrated stereotype that it was parodied for years in television sketches and other films. It was what we expected to see, whenever Henry was mentioned. Iconic and frequently renewed, without being pinned to a specific colour image, it is one of the easier Mandela effects to explain.

Edit:
As I was writing the above, I pictured Sid James in the Carry On version of the rôle. If he does eat a chicken-leg, it does not feature in any of the posters, screen-grabs or lobby-cards I have just viewed. He is featured at table with a jug of wine in some.

 

[Belshazzar]

I'm not entirely convinced. If you are right then how do you account for the discoloured lower teeth sported by Dolly in the posts above by both myself and Ermintrude? Did this glamour actress have bad teeth? How likely is that? As for `stills` these are often posed publicity shots and not direct pictures taken from the films : it is likely that such an actress would have removed her braces for such a publicity shot.

I'm sorry, but I don't see teeth that are particularly discoloured. I agree that she would have removed any braces for publicity shots, but in all of those she has also removed her glasses. I was referring to photos published at the time of the film's release which depict stills from the film and clearly show she did not have braces.
Also, have you totally disregarded this scene?

Again, blatantly obvious there are no braces present on upper or lower teeth. I don't understand - Are you claiming that all prints of the film after a certain date have had her braces removed by CGI?! You do realise that is just crazy, huh?

 

[rynner2]

I am one of those who feels he can recall a famous and iconic colour portrait of Henry VIII holding a chicken or turkey drumstick, but no such scene has yet been unearthed:

I think James is right, and you're recalling a scene from a film or a TV production.

It probably was a chicken leg - I don't think turkeys had reached Britain in Henry's day.

 

[Mythopoeika]

I think James is right, and you're recalling a scene from a film or a TV production.

It probably was a chicken leg - I don't think turkeys had reached Britain in Henry's day.

Yep. Turkeys came from America in the early 19th century.

 

[OneWingedBird]

I'm not entirely convinced. If you are right then how do you account for the discoloured lower teeth sported by Dolly in the posts above by both myself and Ermintrude? Did this glamour actress have bad teeth? How likely is that?

I've lost the link now, but there was a theory I happened across that the movie was edited and that a lower brace was visible still through a glass that Dolly drinks from, it looked equally like it could just be the opposte rim of the glass.