By Jeffrey Sweet
A friend has engaged me to write a nightclub act for a young singer he admires. Rather than do the usual autobiographic stuff – “I was born in a small town but always wanted to conquer Broadway, etc.” – we’ve decided to organize her act around songs that were introduced in cartoons. And just to make it a little tough on ourselves, we’re going to allow only a couple from Disney films.
Some major songwriters composed for animated features and shorts. Hoagy Carmeichal and Frank Loesser wrote the beguiling, “Couple in the Castle” for Hoppity Goes to Town. Before they wrote Funny Girl together, Jule Styne and Bob Merrill collaborated on a TV special called Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol which featured one of Styne’s most elegant melodies, “Winter Was Warm.” (Victoria Clark sings it on the CD, Jule Styne in Hollywood.) Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, years after The Wizard of Oz, came to the aid of Judy Garland by supplying the score for Gay Purr-ee, a story about cats in Paris. We’re planning on pairing their “Paris is a Lonely Town” with Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens’s “Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart” from the score for Anastasia.
One of the happiest discoveries has been of the work a composer named Sammy Timberg did for the brothers Fleisher, Max and Dave, who were Walt Disney’s principle competitors from the early Thirties into the Forties. In addition to providing the muscular underscoring for the stunning early Superman cartoons, Timberg wrote for Popeye and Betty Boop and their animated pals. Olive Oyl singing, “I Want a Clean-Shaven Man” and Betty singing, “Don’t Take Away My Boop-boop-de-doop” offer the sly pleasure of ironic innocence. At the moment, I’m thinking of opening the act with a Timberg that begins, “What can I do for you?/I’d do most anything you asked me to.” It was originally sung as a jaunty two-beat as Popeye drove a car into town. The attractive young lady I’m working with would slow it down a bit and invest it with implications clean-living Popeye never imagined.
Much of Timberg’s stuff is wonderfully catchy. If you’re looking for jaunty, toe-tapping melodies, filled with the sound of American optimism in the face of the Depression and war, I recommend a CD called "Boop-Oop-A-Dooin'," a collection of Timberg’s work for the Fleishers. It’s the musical equivalent of ginger ale, minus the burp.
Jeffrey Sweet is a playwright, journalist and teacher, probably best known for his play THE VALUE OF NAMES, the musical WHAT ABOUT LUV? (which played the Orange Tree many years ago), and a history of Chicago's Second City comedy troupe called SOMETHING WONDERFUL RIGHT AWAY. A resident artist at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre, nine of his plays will soon appear in anthology published by Northwestern University Press.
A friend has engaged me to write a nightclub act for a young singer he admires. Rather than do the usual autobiographic stuff – “I was born in a small town but always wanted to conquer Broadway, etc.” – we’ve decided to organize her act around songs that were introduced in cartoons. And just to make it a little tough on ourselves, we’re going to allow only a couple from Disney films.
Some major songwriters composed for animated features and shorts. Hoagy Carmeichal and Frank Loesser wrote the beguiling, “Couple in the Castle” for Hoppity Goes to Town. Before they wrote Funny Girl together, Jule Styne and Bob Merrill collaborated on a TV special called Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol which featured one of Styne’s most elegant melodies, “Winter Was Warm.” (Victoria Clark sings it on the CD, Jule Styne in Hollywood.) Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, years after The Wizard of Oz, came to the aid of Judy Garland by supplying the score for Gay Purr-ee, a story about cats in Paris. We’re planning on pairing their “Paris is a Lonely Town” with Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens’s “Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart” from the score for Anastasia.
One of the happiest discoveries has been of the work a composer named Sammy Timberg did for the brothers Fleisher, Max and Dave, who were Walt Disney’s principle competitors from the early Thirties into the Forties. In addition to providing the muscular underscoring for the stunning early Superman cartoons, Timberg wrote for Popeye and Betty Boop and their animated pals. Olive Oyl singing, “I Want a Clean-Shaven Man” and Betty singing, “Don’t Take Away My Boop-boop-de-doop” offer the sly pleasure of ironic innocence. At the moment, I’m thinking of opening the act with a Timberg that begins, “What can I do for you?/I’d do most anything you asked me to.” It was originally sung as a jaunty two-beat as Popeye drove a car into town. The attractive young lady I’m working with would slow it down a bit and invest it with implications clean-living Popeye never imagined.
Much of Timberg’s stuff is wonderfully catchy. If you’re looking for jaunty, toe-tapping melodies, filled with the sound of American optimism in the face of the Depression and war, I recommend a CD called "Boop-Oop-A-Dooin'," a collection of Timberg’s work for the Fleishers. It’s the musical equivalent of ginger ale, minus the burp.
Jeffrey Sweet is a playwright, journalist and teacher, probably best known for his play THE VALUE OF NAMES, the musical WHAT ABOUT LUV? (which played the Orange Tree many years ago), and a history of Chicago's Second City comedy troupe called SOMETHING WONDERFUL RIGHT AWAY. A resident artist at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre, nine of his plays will soon appear in anthology published by Northwestern University Press.