Tea at Trianon: Ten Cents a Dance: Doris Day and 'Love Me or Leave Me'

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, March 4, 2022

Ten Cents a Dance: Doris Day and 'Love Me or Leave Me'

From Steyn Online:

Day made Love Me or Leave Me not long after her contract with Warner Bros. had ended – a run of films that made her a star but are, in hindsight, a wholly lackluster bunch of titles, the (provisional) highlights of which were Young Man With a Horn, On Moonlight Bay and Storm Warning, her only non-musical film for the studio. Ava Gardner had turned down the role, which earned her a studio suspension, and Day got the second big break of her movie career.

Love Me or Leave Me is a biopic of Ruth Etting, a singer who was enormously popular in the '20s and '30s, but whose fame has diminished almost entirely today. But anyone old enough to buy a movie ticket in 1955 would have remembered Etting. She was a singer who, as much if not more than Bing Crosby, built her sound on the measured, intimate requirements of singing into an electronic microphone instead of projecting into a crowded nightclub or the acoustic horn of the first decades of recorded sound. Etting was enormously influential, and her style was imitated widely – you can hear her phrasing all over Fred Astaire's vocals for his RKO musicals.

She had also gained some infamy from her personal and business relationships – specifically her marriage to Martin "Moe the Gimp" Snyder, a Chicago hoodlum who managed her career until his belligerence and abuse led to their divorce. Etting began a relationship with Myrl Alderman, her accompanist, but a still-jealous Snyder traveled to Los Angeles in 1938, kidnapped Alderman, and took him to Etting's home, where a scuffle broke out and Snyder shot Alderman. Etting had already retired from show business, but the scandal gave her an unwelcome notoriety. (Read more.)

Ruth Etting

julygirl said...: Recently appeared on Turner Classic Movies. James Cagney at his best and Doris Day of course being Doris Day with her gentle but steady style of acting and singing.; March 4, 2022 at 10:36:00 AM EST