Music: Whistler’s Hit Parade

In The Trespasser, one of Hollywood’s earliest (1929) sound movies, Director Edmund Goulding hit a snag: no matter how Gloria Swanson said the line (“Take him back, I don’t want him”), it sounded corny. Instead of changing the line, he took the Hollywood way out: he diverted the audience’s attention with background music. Goulding thought up a tune himself, whistled it to an arranger. His tune, to which Elsie Janis later wrote lyrics, became Love, Your Spell Is Everywhere.

Last year, directing The Razor’s Edge, he objected to the music written for a Montmartre café scene. He whistled a new tune, which was picked up by a studio accordion player and transcribed for orchestra. The studio got 5,000 letters asking about the song. After that Tin Pan Alleyman Mack Gordon wrote a slushy verse to go with Goulding’s mushy tune.

A small café, Mam’selle,

Our rendezvous, Mam’selle

The “violins were warm and sweet

And so were you, Mam’selle.*

Last week Goulding’s background music had leaped to the front of the Hit Parade. Mam’selle jumped from 25th to first place on sheet music best-seller lists in ten weeks. Said Whistler Goulding proudly: “When you whistle you’re naked. You can’t play covering chords to conceal the fact that you haven’t got a good tune.”

* Copyright, 1947, Twentieth Century Music Corp. By permission Leo Feist, Inc.