Tea at Trianon: "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered"

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

Monday, August 28, 2023

"Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered"

Rita Hayworth singing "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" in Pal Joey (1957)

From Debra Esolen at Word and Song:

Not all of the Rodgers and Hart tunes used in “Pal Joey” were newly written for that show. Many came from the team’s previous musicals. But “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” was composed for the female lead in to sing about her love for the scapegrace, Joey. The song — a capsulized version of the play’s main plot — was not an immediate hit on its own, apart from Broadway. It’s not that the public didn’t take to the song, but that they didn’t hear it. American radio broadcasters had put into place a boycott of all songs licensed by ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) in a dispute over use fees. For this reason the earliest recordings of “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” received no air time at all.

And so it happened that a Rodgers and Hart song destined to become an American Songbook standard took a full decade to become a hit. But when it hit, it hit! In June of 1950, six different recordings of the song held a spot on Billboard’s list of the 20 most-played singles on radio. And in May of that year Billboard listed the song’s sheet music as the most-sold for a single. “Bewitched” was covered by an amazing array of singers during the 1950’s — Doris Day, Jo Stafford, Mel Torme, Sammy Davis, Jr., Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, and many others, including Sinatra, who had a single hit with it in 1958. (Read more.)