And even more Happy Old Songs

To start a new week charged with positive energy, here's post #3 of my "Happy Old Songs" series.

"Pennies from Heaven" (Music by Arthur Johnston and lyrics by Johnny Burke, 1936)

I love this song, every morning I listen to it while I'm on the bus heading to the my work/internship. And I imagine the nice picture of pennies raining from heaven and sunshine and flowers, accompanied by the catchy rhythm, and all that just cheer me up, even when the morning is gray and the subway is packed up. I have two favorite versions: the one by Luois Prima (aka the voice of King Louie in "The Jungle Book") and the one I have on my mp3 by singer/classic movie lover, Emma Wallace. .

(Edited) The original post for Emma's version is here, but she gave me the embedding code so you can listening right now:

"It's a good day" (Written by Peggy Lee & Dave Barbour, 1947)

I listened this song for the first time watching a 7up commercial on tv. I thought that the song was really good and then I googled and found the name of the singer: Peggy Lee. I'm a fan of hers since then. I embedded the commercial and a live presentation.

"The lady is a tramp" (Lyrics by Lorenz Hart; music by Richard Rodgers, 1937)

I saw "Pal Joey" starring Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak the past year, and this is like the only thing I remember from that movie. "The lady is a tramp" was very well used in the film: the moment in which Frank tells to stiff Rita all he wanted to say using his piano and this song. I added a live version, because maybe you won't find the original as happy as I do :)

That's all for this weekend. See ya tomorrow, I'll be posting Day 08 of the Old Hollywood Meme (hopefully).

Previous Happy Old Songs Posts: 1 | 2

Hitchcock or how I became a classic movie lover

I just finished watching "Rear Window" for the umpteenth time and I had to comment something about it. I started writing about how cool Hitchcock's movies are, but I realized that what I really wanted to say is how grateful I am to Hitch and how nostalgic watching his films makes me.

I think the first time I heard about Hitchcock was at high school. Our philosophy teacher made a test in which you had to interpret some drawings and write what it was. I was a very good student but when this thing came up I just didn't know what to answer. I mean, really, what the heck is this?

No one at my class knew. I was very angry with my teacher. She said: "well, that's Hitchcock, you really haven't heard about him?? Ever??". Of course not!

He made his second apparition at university, second journalism year, when we had to watch a movie called "Rear Window" for our weekly media test. Like pretty much all our homework it was just that, another thing to do. So maybe that's why I don't remember the first time I watched a Hitchcock film. Or maybe I didn't watch it at all and I just asked a friend what was it about. Yeah, that's what happened. 

Then I took a course called "Audiovisual Review". Since I was a child, I watched with my family classics like "The Sound of Music" & "Gone with the wind". But I preferred modern movies and I thought I knew a lot about cinema. In that class I learned I didn't.

We had this teacher who was talking about many films, things and people I hadn't heard about. Like Billy Wilder and a French magazine called Cahiers du Cinema. We saw an old movie starring some guy called Cary Grant and a lady called Ginger Rogers. And Marilyn Monroe was there too. At least I knew who she was. Kind of. We saw "Ace in the hole" and we had to review it. I really liked it, but I remember I wrote an awful text, kind of "the movie is in black and white, so that reflects its mood" or something***. 

We were in one of the last classes, we had seen movies like "The Royal Tenenbaums" (I liked it), "Raging Bull" (too violent for me...says the girl who loves "Kill Bill") and "Dead Ringers" (too gross for me).

Then, we saw "Vertigo".

Wow.

The class was quiet, it was a winter afternoon.

It was dark.

I was immersed in Hitch's oneiric world. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. 

I'd never seen Jim Stewart or Kim Novak before. But their performances trapped me. 

And that was it. 

I think I bought like 20 of his movies to a guy who also loved Hitchcock. I liked them all.

I also remember this fan said "I think the girls in classic movies are much prettier and classier than modern actresses". Now I now what he meant. And that goes, of course, for the boys.

Then came Audrey to finish what Hitchcok had started. 

But that's another story.

*** I've been looking for that class notepad, but I haven't found it. I wish I could read the things I wrote 4 years ago and how I probably misspelled all these names that now are so familiar to me.