Word: songed
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...name given the Return) was Theodor Herzl, who had been a foppish Viennese journalist until the Dreyfus case in France convinced him that Jews could never hope to be assimilated by other peoples. Herzl, who once claimed to sum up life in the words of a French popular song ("Life is vain, a bit of hope, a bit of hate, and then-good night!"), suddenly became the dynamic leader of Russian ghetto dwellers. At first he favored a British suggestion that persecuted Jews settle in fertile Uganda, but he found his followers would go nowhere but to Palestine. He shouted...
...chorus at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera, whose members burst into song for about $14 each a night, has never been one of the company's greatest attractions. For its 61st annual season, opening in November, the Met's board of directors proposed to fire 16 choristers, reduce the chorus' size from 94 to 78. The notes it promptly heard from the American Guild of Musical Artists (president: Baritone Lawrence Tibbett) were decidedly unmusical. The union insisted that its own board should have the say on how big the chorus should be and who could be fired...
Flight of Wordages. Houdini generally stays out of trouble by not criticizing Crown officials (one rival's song went: "I must be very frank and say, I was glad when Sir Hollis went away"). His Stone Cold Dead describes a murder in Port-of-Spain's Grass Market in 1939. He recorded it himself in 1939 (as He Had It Coming) but it got no popularity until Songstress Fitzgerald unearthed it this spring. Other Houdini songs have had such innocuous themes as I Like Bananas Because They Have No Bones and Roosevelt Opens World's Fair...
...Song for God. When he was eight years old Benjamin Britten revealed his unorthodox musical behavior by writing an angry song to be sung by God. He wrote a U.S. operetta named Paul Bunyan which got no place. At Tanglewood he glumly watched rehearsals wearing a pearl-grey jacket, a yellow tie and strap sandals...
Hottest program news of all: after many a song & dance about it, Bing Crosby had decided to sign with Philco. Last week he sent them his terms, probably the steepest in radio history: 1) $35,000 for a weekly half-hour program; 2) the right to transcribe some shows. The reason: he might want to be somewhere else at broadcast time,* could record the program in advance...