WHITE CHRISTMAS AND THE DAY BING CROSBY CRIED

In 2014, the 70th anniversary ceremonies honoring the Allied Forces who served and died in Normandy in the summer of 1944 ended, but a small British village quietly observed its own sacrifice made to the ravages of World War II. The residents of Freckleton in northwest England on Saturday saluted the memories of 61 people killed Aug. 23, 1944, when an American bomber undergoing a test flight became entangled in severe weather and nose-dived into the village. Thirty-eight of the fatalities were children ages 4 to 6 who were attending their second day of school for the semester.

Bing Crosby was in England doing a tour with the USO and heard about the tragedy at the school and wanted to visit and talk with some of the surviving children.

One of the three children in the school's toddler wing to survive was Ruby Whittle Currell who was four at the time of the crash. She was taken to the base hospital, burned over 40 to 50 percent of her body.

Ruby was all wrapped up like a mummy, all in gauze and Bing Crosby started talking to her and he asked her, ‘What would you like me to sing?’ and all she knew was "White Christmas."

Crosby tried three times to sing the song by the burned child’s bedside but kept choking up. Finally he walked out into the hall and sang from there.

At first he just couldn’t look at her. After he sang "White Christmas", he came back into the room and apologized. He explained to her that he was not sad at how she looked but upset at what the war was doing. According to Ruby, he pulled out a pen and paper and wrote his address and personal phone number down. He also paid for her extensive hospital bills, which included various operations.

She survived though, and is now 75 years old, but she will never forget how touching and kind Bing Crosby was to her. He wrote to her off and on until his death in October of 1977...

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WORLD WAR II, THE US, AND CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD

Here is a great article I discovered to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. It is much better than anything I could ever write...

World War II, the US, and Classical Hollywood
by Charles Livingston

Wartime U.S.A. 1941-1945; the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor, Uncle Sam recruits his troops, and nonetheless, Hollywood manages to sustain its dominant prowess. Certainly Hollywood experiences its much anticipated, yet seemingly nominal setbacks at the box office (following the U.S.’s involvement in WWII), but by 1943, Hollywood is undoubtedly recognized as “the worlds cinema.” This is courtesy of Humphrey Bogart,Casablanca, and most of all: The Second World War.

The catastrophic destruction of Pearl Harbor ultimately led to the United States participation in the war. Our contribution to the Worlds War effort s inevitably led to the deaths of countless valiant American men. This also meant America would become unified by way of Immense Patriotism, and no media outlet of the era triggered a more severe emotional response than the cinema. While Pearl Harbor and the War loomed over seas, an abundant of proud yet weary Americans elected to visit the movies on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. Several modes/ styles of cinema may have been accessible at the time, but no variation of film remained more paramount to Hollywood cinema (Post the U.S. joining the war) than the incessant method of Realism, Classical Hollywood’s proudest accomplishment.

Some of these films consisted of Casablanca, Once upon a Honeymoon, and The Best Years of Our Lives. A.O. Scott states, alluding to Casablanca, “The basic storyline would become the staple of wartime American Cinema.” All of these films would fervently communicate to, and connect American film viewers to the war that was physically distant, yet emotionally imbedded within them.

Another way, in which Hollywood managed to maintain its corporate dominance over any other media outlet, was due to the halt in production and mass distribution of the Television. The period between 1941 and 1945 could have very well witnessed the birth of TV; a legitimate form of competition meant to combat Hollywood and the studio system. Logically, resources during wartime should focus predominately on the war effort (Man power, materials, etc.), this proved to be one of the principal reasons behind Hollywood’s continued prominence during that specific period.

1946 proved to be Hollywood’s most successful year at the box office. This was not a coincidental occurrence by any stretch of the imagination. 1946 marked the end of World War II, therefore soldiers had come home from battle, the United Stated rejoiced as they recalled their countless military exploits, and families began to emerge. This also marked the era of the baby boomer (child born after World War II’s end). Americans were visiting their local cinema 5-6 time a week, sometimes merely a day off from the movies would seem foreign to the average American man and woman during 1946.

Hollywood has thrived throughout its vast existence, but no era is more indicative of its success than within the studio era, or most of all, throughout the four years before and four years following WWII. Weather it was the propaganda film, military drama, or gangster film, Americans seemed to visit the theaters not as a means of escape, but as a way of subconsciously connecting themselves with the realities of war...

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MEL BROOKS, THE NAZIS, AND WORLD WAR II

Last Veteran's Day on November 11, 2014 I posted a story on Jimmy Stewart and his military experience. Now that it is Memorial Day, I figured I'd post an interesting story about Mel Brooks and his time in the military during World War II...

Mel Brooks is best known for his award-winning comedy films such as Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles. But Brooks was also a combat veteran of World War II who fought under General Patton in the Battle of the Bulge: a four-week-long battle that resulted in the death of over 60,000 Allied troops.

Brooks, who was studying psychology at Brooklyn College at the time, was drafted into the Army and sent to war as a combat engineer in the 1104 Combat Engineer Battalion, 78th Infantry Division. During his time in the Army, Brooks was primarily responsible for disarming land mines.

While fighting in Germany, Brooks often heard Nazi propaganda being played from loudspeakers, which must have really got on his nerves because he went about creating his own speaker system to play Al Jolson, a Jewish singer, back at the Nazis, according to Military.

Brooks, when asked about his time at war, said, “War isn’t hell . . . War is loud. Much too noisy. All those shells and bombs going off around you. Never mind death. A man could lose his hearing.”
So the next time you watch Spaceballs, remember that Mel Brooks once fought Nazis with music because apparently he really hated how loud warfare was...

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AL JOLSON AND WORLD WAR II

Al Jolson was one of the greatest entertainers for the good part of two decades. However, by 1940 he was a faded star. Audiences swooned singers such as Bing Crosby and newcomer Frank Sinatra. Even though he was forgotten, Jolson lobbied to entertain the troops overseas and in June of 1942 arrangements were made to send him to Alaska, via Seattle and Washington. As Al reported in a dispatch to Variety: “We arrived in Anchorage at 9:10 p.m., Anchorage time, and stayed at the Westward Hotel. When they told me to observe the blackout regulations and put my lights out I had to laugh, for in this part of Alaska at midnight you can thread a needle on Main Street. We gave two performances in Anchorage, each for an audience of 1,500 soldiers. Each show lasted an hour and I almost wore out the knees of my pants singing ‘Mammy’.

Al didn’t mention that rumours had swept the camp at Anchorage that Lana Turner was coming. “No she wasn’t - it was Dorothy Lamour,” some one else had said. When Jolson arrived on stage the soldiers’ disappointment expressed itself in the silence.

“Hello boys - I’m Al Jolson. You’ll see my name in the history books.” One soldier laughed, then another. Al told a joke, and another, and the laughter grew. He chatted about home, told them what he thought of Hitler and Hirohito and the laughter spread all round. Someone called for a song. Al gave them what they asked for and he was swamped by whistling applause. Al Jolson had found a new audience; and the soldiers had discovered Al Jolson.

Jolson: “Don’t you feel well, son?”
Soldier: “Oh, yessuh, Mista Jolson. It was on’y when you got to singin’ about Dixie. Well, Mista Jolson, it jest kinda got me - thass all . . . You know Mista Jolson, dis heah Arctic Ocean is an awful long way f’m tu-tty miles t’other side of Bummin’ham, Alabama.”

“Until now,” Al reported to Variety, “the transporting of our small piano had been an overture to an aspirin tablet, but from here on in it became a major headache. In order to entertain all the boys detailed in the vicinity of Anchorage, it became necessary to give shows in foxholes, gun emplacements, dugouts, to construction groups on military roads, in fact, any place where two or more soldiers were gathered together, it automatically became a Winter Garden for me and I gave a show. Imagine carting the piano to these locations. Sometimes it was by truck, once on a side car and once on a mule pack.”

It was during the Alaskan tour that one young soldier called out: “Kiss my wife for me when you get back to New York, will yer Al?”

“I’ll do better than that,” Al called back. “I’ll take her out to dinner. What’s her name?”

After writing her name down with her telephone number, he called out: “Any more?”

Everyone shouted at once and Al wrote down as many names as he could.

“I’ll call them all when I get back,” he said. And he did, informing mothers, wives and girlfriends that their loved ones were in fine shape. Jolson spent time talking to the servicemen, establishing a relationship, till his arrival in a jeep was always met by a collective: “Hiya, Al!”

Stopping soldiers in the street, Jolson would say: “My name’s Jolson. Do you wanna hear me sing?”

‘Next Town Reilly’ was a one man Department of Morale Boosting. “Those guys wouldn’t exactly be immune to a shapely dish once in a while, too,” Al told the USO, “whether she could sing or not.”

Jolson: “We woulda brought Lana Turner but she’s busy with the Second Front.”

In July 1942 Jolson and Fried toured all the US bases in the Caribbean before the USO flew them, along with actress Merle Oberon and singer Patricia Morison, to England and Northern Ireland. Singing whatever was wanted, wherever he wanted, even to troops on street corners, he enjoyed every round of applause. He told servicemen what he had told their fathers about English beer: “It should have been put back into the horse.”

The troupe had been scheduled to appear at the London Palladium with Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels but Merle Oberon refused to appear. “We are here to entertain the troops, not the general public,” she said. Jolson was furious and announced he was returning to the United States - alone. “I just feel that I could better on my own than I could as a member of a troupe,” Jolson explained to the New York Times. “If I want to crowd in an extra show for defence workers in factories, I’d be able to do it.”

Jolson hadn’t ‘gone over’ as well as he hoped with some of the English audiences and as he sat depressed in the bar of the Savoy Hotel, Ralph Reader walked in whistling ‘Keep Smiling at Trouble’.

“English, English!” he excitedly greeted Ralph and they reminisced about their days at the Winter Garden. “They were great days, English, great days,” he said with a tear in his eye.

New York Times: “There were few jokes in his talk. The comedian was playing a straight part . . . For, like many other comedians, at heart, Jolson is serious and sentimental.”

New Yorker: “We’ve just heard from a soldier who was fortunate enough to be on hand at one of the entertainments presented before the troops in Ireland by Jolson and some of the other performers from the States. Jolson, our soldier reports, concluded the entertainment with what was obviously considered to be the best number in his repertoire. It was ‘Brother Can You Spare a Dime?’ - and Jolson gave it, as the people say, everything. No other happening in recent weeks has given us such a sense of this significant moment in history.”

‘The Colgate Show Starring Al Jolson’, a weekly radio show that CBS signed Jolson to do, ran until June 1943. Usually opening the show with an up-tempo number like ‘The Yankee Doodle Blues’, or “I’m Sitting On Top of the World’, he usually ended with a sentimental ballad like ‘Sonny Boy’. The show’s female vocalist was Jo Stafford and the musical director was Gordon Jenkins.

Gordon Jenkins commenting on Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra: “Neither one, I have to tell you, had the electricity that Al had.”

In July 1943, Al left on an overseas tour to entertain the troops. Since Martin Fried had been drafted, Al needed a pianist to accompany him and asked his friend Harry Akst. At their first stop, Georgetown, British Guiana, Al found he couldn’t reach the high notes at the close of ‘Swanee’. In a panic, he was ready to give up the whole tour. Harry had to convince him that he didn’t have to cash in on high finishes - Crosby didn’t. “They died with vaudeville,” Harry explained.

The new Al Jolson voice was born - not so light and breezy but deeper and more mellow.

Jolson had already cancelled his thirteen Colgate radio shows programmed for the fall when he suddenly began to feel bad. In an emergency flight, Al and Harry flew home to Miami Beach on 21 September 1943. Less than two weeks later while standing in a hotel lobby in New York, Jolson suddenly collapsed. Jolson woke up in a hospital bed to find he had picked up malaria from overseas and it had turned into pneumonia. His temperature reached 105F and doctors had to contact a military hospital for the proper serum before he began to recover. “No more overseas tours for you,” the doctors told him. After recuperating in Miami he went back to work playing himself in a film biography of George Gershwin called Rhapsody in Blue.

In October, Al and Harry began another tour of army hospitals. Winding up in Florida, they then drove up to New York, before driving west playing to a string of hospitals en route to California. By the time they reached Los Angeles, Al was complaining of feeling run down. Suddenly struck down by severe chest pains, Al was rushed into the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. Malaria had struck again and this time with a malignant strain to it.

The Warner brothers, Harry and Jack, were gravely concerned and requested General Arnold, head of the Army Air Services, to fly two of his top physicians to Los Angeles. Because of Al’s tremendous war work the request was granted. The doctors saved his life but had to remove parts of two ribs and cut a malignant slice out of his left lung. Not allowed any visitors for a week, Jolson told his nurse: “I’ll never sing again.” Fortunately for soldiers and the world, Jolson would sing again...