Tuesday, January 15, 2013

This is just wrong on so many levels

I’m talking about this video clip in which Kate Smith introduces a rather strange performance of “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans” by Juliet Prowse, complete with high kicks and a tap-dancing troupe, on The Hollywood Palace television program back in the day (4:36).

I mean, it’s as if Susan Boyle were on Britain’s Got Talent and then had to stand by and watch some dancers get all the glory, with the audience lapping it up.

Oh, wait, that actually happened.

It’s as if Bing Crosby, who introduced “White Christmas” -- arguably the best-known Christmas song of the twentieth century -- on a radio program on Christmas Day 1941, were hosting a Christmas special on television years later but had to stand back and watch someone else introduce another Christmas song.

Oh, wait, that actually happened, too (3:48).

But this post has a happy ending. It’s not as if Kate Smith, who introduced a rather well-known song herself back on a radio program on Armistice Day in 1938, didn’t get a final moment of glory (3:20).

If Bing Crosby had a final moment of glory, I am unaware of what or when it was.

I know it isn’t Christmas -- hey, it isn’t even Epiphany -- but you guys got me started with your comments about “What Child Is This?” on my previous post, which didn’t have anything to do with Christmas either.

So this post is kind of your own fault.

Let the comments begin. I expect you’ll be discussing Irving Berlin, or New Orleans, or ice hockey.

7 comments:

  1. I once went to New Orleans. We went to the French Quarter and I loved it. In retrospect, I realised it was actually France that I loved, not New Orleans.

    So I suppose this comment is actually not even about New Orleans, but of France.

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  2. Katherine, I once passed through New Orleans on the way from my home in Texas to my first Air Force assignment in Florida. I'm afraid I didn't stay long enough to form an opinion.

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  3. No, Putz, it isn't. But it might be about Bing Crosby.

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  4. this post must be about florida

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  5. I've never been to New Orleans, but I've been to France a couple of times.

    Juliet Prowse almost lost her costume there. Exciting.

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  6. Carolina, I haven't made it to France yet, though I would love to -- I'll have to get a new passport first because my old one expired -- but I landed at the airport in Amsterdam on my way home from Stockholm way back in 1969.

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

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