Word: hollywoodism
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...from the top of the charts for a year or so, he'd drive himself nuts wondering if his long run as America's troubadour was suddenly over. One dry spell came in 1930. He hadn't had a #1 song in three years; now he'd gone to Hollywood to write a musical for Douglas Fairbanks, "Reaching for the Moon," and after discouraging previews the studio had cut most of the songs. "I developed the damnedest feelings of inferiority," Berlin said. "I got so I called in anybody to listen to my songs - stockroom boys, secretaries. One blink...
...composer had no love for him. This was Harry Warren, the Italian-born song-plugger who became Hollywood's top song-maker. In 1944, during the Allied air assault on Germany, Warren snapped, "They bombed the wrong Berlin." Edward Jablonski, Berlin's biographer and a confidant for many years, attributes the slur to jealousy "at a time when Warren's own Hollywood career was in decline." This is way off: Warren had five #1 songs in the 40s (including "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" and "On the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe"); Berlin had only one (all right, it was "White Christmas...
...After You Get What You Want, You Don't Want It" (1920), performed by Marilyn Monroe (1954), on "Irving Berlin in Hollywood." Monroe's liquid alto puts fun in the song's sexual weariness. She's at once Marlene Dietrich and Carole Lombard - the woman who's seen it all and the gal who hints she wouldn't mind doing it again...
...Anything You Can Do" (1946), by Judy Garland and Howard Keel (1948), on "Irving Berlin in Hollywood." Garland was to star in the "Annie Get Your Gun" movie, but frazzed nerves forced her withdrawal. The nerve shows in this duet of rivals, sung at a faster-than-usual tempo, and with an antagonism that ends up somewhere between alarming and awe-inspiring...
...Cheek to Cheek" (1935), by Fred Astaire, on "Irving Berlin in Hollywood." Of course...