Word: schmalz
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...heaviness. When Capra-Riskin open up the cinema organ in Meet John Doe, what comes out is not solid but uncertain musical structure (in the middle of the picture they even fall back on coy effects with a small dog), not so much Bachian power as Lisztian super-schmalz. Their organ often sounds not so much a classic organ as a Mighty Wurlitzer-its tremolos too tremulous, its diapasons too windy. And in treating the theme of Love Thy Neighbor they are competing with some of the noblest products of human...
Schumann: Frauenliebe und Leben (Helen Traubel, soprano, with Pianist Coenraad V. Bos; Victor: 8 sides; $3.75). Romantic Robert Schumann wrote Woman's Love and Life-eight songs to poems by Chamisso-to hymn domestic love. Warm-voiced Soprano Traubel puts proper schmalz in such lines as (to a wedding ring) I place thee, holy object, upon my lips, my heart...
...radio's big ten were the deftly written serial The Aldrich Family (sixth), the schmalz of Band Leader Kay Kyser (ninth), the soap-opera One Man's Family (tenth). Beating the graven image Charlie McCarthy by a whisker, Jack Benny led the pack for 1940. Others in Crossley's peerage: Fibber McGee & Molly, the Lux Radio Theatre, Bob Hope, Kate Smith, Major Bowes...