August 21, 2019

“Everybody loves a lover” (as Shakespeare never said)...



On July 21, 1958, a week after being released, Doris Day’s recording of the song “Everybody Loves a Lover” entered the Billboard Top 40.

The 45 RPM single, issued by Columbia Records, eventually reached #6 on both the CashBox and Billboard charts.

It was a last big charting hit in the US for Day and has remained one of her most popular songs.

The lyrics were written by veteran lyricist Richard Adler; the music by composer Robert Allen.

Adler and Allen had previously collaborated on the songs for the 1954 Broadway musical The Pajama Game, which was a huge success.

In 1957, Doris Day was tapped as the female lead for the movie adaptation, which was also highly successful.

After working on The Pajama Game, Day told Adler she was looking for a novelty song to record.

Adler’s marriage to his first wife, songwriter and playwright Marion Hart, had hit the rocks at the time — a fact that led, ironically, to the song he wrote for Day.

On a trip to Europe in 1957, he had been introduced to actress and singer Sally Ann Howes.

According to Adler, it was love at first sight.

On January 1, 1958, the same day his divorce from Marion was finalized, Adler married Sally Ann.

Marion was apparently furious and threatened to ruin Adler’s career by publicly attacking him as a philanderer in the news media.

In his 1990 autobiography, You Gotta Have Heart, Adler says he called his lawyer, Sidney Cohn, and expressed his concerns about her threat.

Cohn felt press coverage of Adler’s love for and marriage to Howes was unlikely to create a scandal that would hurt his songwriting career.

“Be happy,” he told Adler. You know what Shakespeare said. All the world loves a lover.”

Adler recalled thinking: “Shakespeare doesn’t know what Marion said. Still, I could relax now, think about the future, and get back to writing.”

When Doris Day approached him about writing a novelty song for her, he remembered the line Cohn had attributed to Shakespeare.

In fact, “All the world loves a lover” doesn’t appear in any of William Shakespeare’s works. Nor did he ever use the words “Everybody loves a lover.”

From what I can tell, the Shakespeare line that comes closest is in his play As You Like It. In Act 3, Scene 4, the character Rosalind says: “The sight of lovers feedeth those in love.”

Some people have attributed “Everybody loves a lover” to American writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, probably because he did say something like it. In 1841, Emerson wrote in his essay “Love,” that “All mankind love a lover.”

However, it appears that Richard Adler deserves credit for creating the now proverbial formulation “Everybody loves a lover.”

The biography Doris Day: Sentimental Journey (2010) by Garry McGee says Adler remembered Cohn’s mistaken Shakespeare quote then “took the line, reworked the wording, and came up with lyrics that became ‘Everybody Loves a Lover.’ He met with composer Bob Allen and in a short time the two had a completed song, which they felt was a hit.”

They were right. The song was a hit for Day and was covered by a long list of other singers and bands.

My own favorite is the classic early rock version recorded by The Shirelles in 1962.

Adler’s use of “Everybody loves a lover” as both the title and the first line in the lyrics of what became a highly popular song also made those words a famous quotation, though most people don’t know who wrote them.

In case you want to queue up one of the many versions of song on YouTube and sing along, you can find the full lyrics on these sites.

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August 09, 2019

“Our long national nightmare is over.”



In August of 1974, faced with Congressional hearings, a mountain of bad press and the looming threat of impeachment over the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon became the first president in U.S. history to resign.

His official letter of resignation was delivered at 11:35 a.m. Eastern Time on August 9, 1974.

A half-hour later, Nixon’s Vice President Gerald Ford took the Presidential Oath and was sworn in as the 38th president of the United States.

After the swearing-in ceremony, Ford gave a brief acceptance speech that was broadcast live on radio and television.

He acknowledged that he was taking office “under extraordinary circumstances” and urged Americans to “go forward now together.”

He then made a remark that became — and remains — a famous political quotation:       

      “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”

Following that, Ford alluded to another famous political quote.

“Our Constitution works.” he said. “Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.”

The phrase “a government of laws, and not of men” reflects a political idea that dates back as far as the ancient Greeks.

But it was enshrined in quotation history by John Adams in one of his Novanglus letters, published in the Boston Gazette in 1774.

Written anonymously under the pen name “Novanglus,” these letters argued that Great Britain’s treatment of American colonists violated their rights under British law.

In the seventh Novanglus letter, Adams wrote that “the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire...a government of laws, and not of men.”

By the 20th Century, British monarchs had virtually no real power.

In contrast, American presidents have many significant powers under the law.

One of them is the power to pardon criminals, both after or even — as Ford showed — before they are convicted.

On September 8, 1974, President Ford announced that he had granted Richard Nixon a “full, free, and absolute” pardon for any crimes he “has committed or may have committed” while president.

Since shortly after Donald Trump became president there has been speculation about whether he had committed crimes that could land him in jail after he leaves office or is forced out by impeachment.

Some political pundits have suggested that Vice President Mike Pence would pardon him if that happens or that Trump might even give himself a pardon.

Either way, whenever Trump does leaves office, those Americans who hate him — and those who are simply tired of the constant heated news coverage and arguments he generates — are likely to feel like another national nightmare is finally over.

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