Today you get two quarters, heck, maybe only two sixths of a post. I'm swamped at work. But Pop Candy linked me to something so scary I had to share. But first...
"Be a Clown" was written by Cole Porter, an absolute genius as far as musicals go. He wrote "I Get a Kick Out of You" and "I've Got You Under My Skin" and hundreds of others. He wrote "Be a Clown" for a 1948 film called The Pirate that I've never heard of. Gene Kelly and Judy Garland sang it. But you've probably heard "Be a Clown" It just wasn't called that. In the 1952 classic Singin' in the Rain, Donald Conner sings "Make 'Em Laugh". It is virtually the same song. I had never heard "Be a Clown" until I saw De-Lovely a few years ago. I immediately knew something was up. So after a little snooping around, it turns out that Cole Porter certainly knew he had been plagiarized, but the common belief is that Cole Porter was so thankful to the producer Arthur Freed for giving him the chance to do The Pirate, that he didn't complain when Freed and his partner did "Make 'Em Laugh" a few years later.
So here is the link from Pop Candy. I think you will see why the post is the way it is. Oh yeah, Kate, if you read this, you should not click the link. I shouldn't have.
[Yeah, so the picture is from "Moses Supposes" not "Make 'Em Laugh", sue me. You try finding a picture from Make 'Em Laugh where Donald Conner is larger than a postage stamp.]
2 comments:
I may never sleep again.
That's some pretty cool Photoshop tinkering. All clowns are to be pitied in my book, never feared.
I love Hugh Laurie. I've never seen House, M.D., but his comedic British show, "A Bit of Fry and Laurie", with Stephen Fry, got me through many long months in Turkey via BBC Prime on cable. He'll always have a special place in my heart and I'll never be able to take any of his dramatic roles seriously. In fact, his evil clown look just makes me smile. Season 2 of A Bit of Fry and Laurie is next up on the Netflix queue, and I can't wait.
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