Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Song trivia (for you older readers)

Listening to my French Lazy Radio , they are playing Judy Garland singing 'You made me do it' (sounds like a very young JG). I've heard the song before but on this recording they included a spoken introduction, which I am sure was part of the song when it was written. She speaks as if she was writing a fan letter to Clark Gable, talking about how she fell in love with him because of the way he acted in the movies she saw.
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Well, wrong there. I just searched for the lyrics on Google (is the correct phrase 'I Googled the lyrics'?) and found the song was written in 1913, well before both Clark and Judy. So I guess it was rearranged for her, perhaps in one of her 'Andy Hardy' movies way back then.
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Well, looking at the Internet Movie Database says that this version of the song, titled 'Dear Mr. Gable" was a birthday present for Clark Gable's 36th birthday. Composer Roger Edens adapted the old song “You made me love you", which was sung at the birthday party by a young Judy Garland. Producer Louis B. Mayer was so impressed that he gave an order to let Garland sing it in her next MGM musical, which ended up being Broadway Melody of 1938 .

OK, Garland born in 1922, Gable born in 1901 means his 36th birthday was in 1937, so Garland was 15.

From the trivia – another takeoff from the Andy Hardy ‘let’s put on a play’ series. This movie contained that famous line ‘the show must go on’, which somehow I thought I heard in a bunch of the ‘Golddigger of 19xx’ movies.
OK, I guess you can tell I'm a sucker for the old movies. My favorites were the Busby Berkley series of Golddigger movies from 1929-1933. I just loved the hundreds of tapping feet, the moving pianos and the flourescent violins.

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