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The Butler’s Song

‘Nother YouTube. This is The Butler’s Song. The performance (happily caught on phone cam, looks like) was in 2010, singer is nonagenarian actor George S. Irving (he was also the narrator for Underdog — there’s trivia for you!). The song is from the short-lived Broadway play So Long, 174th Street, which was an adaptation of the long-lived play Enter Laughing, based on Carl Reiner’s semi-autobiography.

Dolores del Río, by the way, was a Mexican actress, one of the lucky ones who successfully made the transition from Silents to Talkies. She was also the One Great Love of Orson Welles’ life.

And you’re a better man than I if you don’t get at least that first line badly stuck in your head. Which — am I wrong? — more or less shares its tune with I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy and She Was an Acrobat’s Daughter (at 4:23, but give yourself a treat and watch the whole damn thing).

And that there is a metric buttload of ancient pop culture references. If you got them all without following the links, you a) are old, b) American and c) wasted your youth sat open-mouthed in front of a television set. Like me.

November 27, 2012 — 11:43 pm
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