Word: blessings
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Titania quarrel was many a big-league radio showman who agreed with the description of B. M. I. as "a pain in the ASCAP." ASCAP's President Gene Buck complacently permitted the BMIred networks to broadcast such patriotic ballads as Stars and Stripes Forever, Anchors Aweigh and God Bless America at the President's inauguration. Meanwhile Arthur Murray introduced B. M. I. tunes in his dancing schools, on the theory that his customers would have to learn them if they wanted to practice by radio at home. Among the sillier consequences of the airy civil war, which...
...program: Contralto Risë Stevens, Baritone Nelson Eddy, the National Symphony under Dr. Hans Kindler, Irving (God Bless America) Berlin, Actors Mickey Rooney, Raymond Massey, Charlie Chaplin, Actress Ethel Barrymore. Master of Ceremonies: Douglas Fairbanks...
...only is the idea itself in rather poor taste, but also the songs themselves, which can best be described in the language of their composers, as "strictly from hunger." In other words, they stink, and no two ways about it. That includes everything, from God Bless America, I Am An American, He's My Uncle, (Sam--how did you guess?), right down (and I do mean down) to Ballad For Americans, the latter designed to appeal to those intellectuals still hanging on to the battered remains of a party line. (Although I'll qualify this by saying that Paul Robeson...
...intelligence and taste you or I may have. As music they're worthless, and as far as patriotism is concerned, I've heard more convincing stuff from Father Coughlin's radio sermons. So the next time one of us is tempted to throw away a nickel to hear God Bless America on a juke box, let's just remember the British merchantman that was torpedoed in the North Atlantic last summer. She went down pretty fast, but the crew kept their spirits up by singing--not Rule Brittania or Pomp and Circumstance, but just plain Beer Barrel Polka. Pardon...
...President will be a rather dull one as far as music is concerned, because ASCAP has possession of all of Sousa's best marching songs. CBS and NBC are building soundproof broadcasting units along Pennsylvania Avenue in order to prevent any music from going out over the air. God Bless America, the new national anthem, will not be heard at all until this argument is settled...