web analytics

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.

Comments


Comment from QuasiModo
Time: November 28, 2012, 12:05 am

I guess that means I’m not old…hooray!


Comment from QuasiModo
Time: November 28, 2012, 12:08 am

…oh, and first! 🙂


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 28, 2012, 12:10 am

Ha! The only hard part about being first on this blog is catching me posting.


Comment from QuasiModo
Time: November 28, 2012, 12:13 am

Now, now…don’t spoil my firsties 🙂

…so, do you have my Zombie Churchill done yet? 🙂


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 28, 2012, 12:32 am

Zombie Churchill! I’d forgotten. And too late for Christmas.

I suck at capitalism.


Comment from QuasiModo
Time: November 28, 2012, 1:24 am

Aww. Oh well, maybe next year…


Comment from Oceania
Time: November 28, 2012, 2:12 am

Thank god Sweasle is showing white people for a change!


Comment from Davem123
Time: November 28, 2012, 2:51 am

Speaking of those who suck at capitalism:

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/11/27/hugo-chavez-headed-back-to-cuba-for-medical-treatment/

Hugo is heading back to Fidel’s socialist paradise for “various sessions of hyperbaric oxygenation.” I must make every effort to grab his name in the pool until the time comes for him to join Che.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: November 28, 2012, 9:07 am

This Friday, then. New Dead Pool!

Looking for this, I found another version of the Acrobat’s Daughter:

She was an acrobat’s daughter.
Her muscles would swell up like yeast.
One look at her face
Made guys keep their place.
For she feared neither boy, man nor beast.

She was an acrobat’s daughter,
She used to tame lions besides.
One bit her named Jack
And she bit him right back.
In two days the poor lion died.

I think Daffy’s version is much more elegant, though:

She was an acrobat’s daughter,
She swung by her teeth from a noose.
But one matinee
Her bridgework gave way,
And she flew through the air like a goose.


Comment from Clifford Skridlow
Time: November 28, 2012, 1:09 pm

I didn’t realize that there was anything but Daffy’s version. Mrs. Skridlow gives me “the look” when I sing it in the grocery store. . .


Comment from orabidoo
Time: November 28, 2012, 5:47 pm

Being an American of certain vintage, I think the picture is of Rush Limpballs without his makeup and HGH injections.


Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: November 28, 2012, 6:30 pm

I have to share this:

I just got off the phone with a vendor. We were trying to solve a supply issue. Honest to God, he said, “I see what you did wrong, you followed the instructions on the order form. didn’t you?”

“Uh, yes?”

“Oh, don’t do that, mail it to this address instead…”


Comment from Redd
Time: November 28, 2012, 7:30 pm

I love her wiki bio where they start off stating that she was a devout Roman Catholic and then go on to list all the men she had affairs with while married.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_del_R%C3%ADo#Personal_life


Comment from BJM2009
Time: November 28, 2012, 9:17 pm

a) are old, b) American and c) wasted your youth sat open-mouthed in front of a television set.

Check, check & check!


Comment from Skandia Recluse
Time: November 28, 2012, 10:06 pm

RE: And that there is a metric buttload of ancient pop culture references.

…and I missed every one of them. Guess I’m not popular, eh?

But I will confess to being recently captivated by ‘Firefly’ and ‘Serenity’; can’t stop watching them, over and over. Three weeks now. It does make one passive rather than searching out knowledge on the internet, learning something, debating, discussing, socializing. But since the recent election I don’t care.

I just want to watch Summer Glau dance in the Maidenhead Bar.


Comment from Stark Dickflüssig
Time: November 28, 2012, 10:48 pm

12 April, 1861: South Carolina Confederates under the command of Brigadier General Beauregard opened fire on Summer Glau.

It ended poorly for them.


Comment from orabidoo
Time: November 29, 2012, 3:07 am

@Redd,

Ahem… these things are not mutually exclusive.

Even besides that, we are talking about a Mexicoon here.

Write a comment

(as if I cared)

(yeah. I'm going to write)

(oooo! you have a website?)


Beware: more than one link in a comment is apt to earn you a trip to the spam filter, where you will remain -- cold, frightened and alone -- until I remember to clean the trap. But, hey, without Akismet, we'd be up to our asses in...well, ass porn, mostly.


<< carry me back to ol' virginny