[Dixielandjazz] FW: "As Time Goes By"

[Stan Brager]

Thank you once again, Bill. This was a well-written article and it's
inclusion
in the DJML is proper.

I've always been fond of "As Time Goes By"
although I was only 7 when the movie was released. I've heard though that
while Dooley Wilson was the pianist featured in the movie, it wasn't he who
played the piano. Do you know the truth of this part of the "As Time..."
story? If true, who was the pianist?

Stan
Stan Brager
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Haesler" <bhaesler at bigpond.net.au>
To: "dixieland jazz mail list" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 3:23 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] FW: "As Time Goes By"


> Dear Friends,
> This interesting 'New York Daily News' article via Denis King from the
> Australian-Dance-Bands list.
> Kind regards,
> Bill.
> ________________________________________________________________
>
> Play It Again
> Herman Hupfeld's greatest hit
> by David Hinckley
> New York Daily News, May 9, 2005
>
> You must remember this
> A kiss is just a kiss
> A sigh is just a sigh
> The fundamental things apply
> As time goes by
>         -- Herman Hupfeld, 1931
>
> The most memorable song in the most memorable movie of all time was
actually
> written for a Broadway clunker years earlier.
>
> "As Time Goes By" was the one seemingly random bolt of perfection for
Herman
> Hupfeld, who never wrote a full movie or Broadway show in his life and
whose
> second most successful song was "When Yuba Played the Rhumba on the Tuba."
>
> It showed up in the 1942 film "Casablanca" only because it was part of the
> never-produced play on which "Casablanca" was based. Musical director Max
> Steiner would have replaced it with one of his own tunes except that
Ingrid
> Bergman was already in a faraway place shooting her next film -- and had
cut
> her hair anyway -- so a reshoot was too much trouble.
>
> Meanwhile, people who only know "As Time Goes By" from "Casablanca" have
> never heard the song itself, because the movie only uses the chorus.
>
> Other than that, its path to immortality was routine.
>
> Herman Hupfeld was born in 1894 in Montclair, N.J., son of a church
> organist. He joined the Navy and spent World War I playing saxophone in
the
> Navy band. After that he made his living as a composer, placing a few
minor
> songs in films. He kept an eye on Broadway, too, and in the summer of 1931
> he made contact with the Shuberts, who were cobbling together a musical
> called "Everybody's Welcome."
>
> Sammy Fain did most of the music, but for one open slot the Shuberts found
> it just as easy to take Hupfeld's "As Time Goes By."
>
> Sung by Frances Williams, the song began with three stanzas of wordplay
that
> sounded like a poor man's Ira Gershwin:
> This day and age we're living in
> Gives cause for apprehension
> With speed and new invention
> And things like a fourth dimension...
> Yet we get a trifle weary
> With Mr. Einstein's theory...
>
> When it got to the chorus, happily, it turned simple and elegant.
>
> But one good chorus wasn't enough to sell critics on the show, which
opened
> Oct. 13 to bad notices and limped through 139 performances before shutting
> down. Those put out of work on closing day included the Jimmy and Tommy
> Dorsey Orchestra and young actress Harriette Lake, who would later rename
> herself Ann Sothern.
>
> Hupfeld's song, though, attracted enough attention that it was recorded
> twice, by Jacques Renard on Brunswick and Rudy Vallee on Victor. Neither
was
> much of a hit, the Depression having creamed record sales, but those who
> enjoyed it included one Murray Burnett, a young Cornell student who found
it
> relaxing to play at his fraternity house.
>
> Burnett went on to become a teacher at Commercial High in New York, and on
> summer break 1938 he visited Europe to see firsthand that continent's
> troubles. There he was moved by the plights of refugees and resisters.
There
> also he was mesmerized by the music of a black piano player working in a
> Paris cafe.
>
> Upon returning to New York, he teamed up with a friend, Joan Alison, to
> write "Everybody Comes to Rick's," a play based on what he had seen in
> Europe. Prominent in the script was a black piano player playing the song
> Burnett had loved back at Cornell, "As Time Goes By."
>
> The play was optioned by Broadway's Martin Gabel and Carly Wharton, but
was
> never produced, partly because Rick's love interest, a conniving
> Americannamed Lois Meredith, was deemed too hard and unsympathetic.
>
> So the play waited -- and waited. And then the Japanese bombed Pearl
Harbor,
> and Warner Bros., looking for patriotic war-related prospects, bought it.
>
> Adjustments were made. Lois became the softer Ilsa. But "As Time Goes By"
> survived, despite Steiner's fear it was a stiff pop song, not jazzy enough
> for Sam the piano man.
>
> Once Warner Bros. boss Hal Wallis vetoed the substitution, Steiner
dutifully
> and skillfully incorporated riffs from "As Time Goes By" throughout his
> score. It was Rick's favorite song. Rick was, after all, a New Yorker
> himself. Perhaps he had seen "Everybody's Welcome."
>
> "Casablanca" opened on Nov. 26, 1942, at New York's Hollywood Theater, not
> far from where "As Time Goes By" had first played 11 years earlier.
>
> This time the critics went wild, and the only reason a half-dozen
recordings
> of "As Time Goes By" were not immediately rushed into production was that
> the ongoing musicians' strike made it impossible.
>
> Instead, the 1931 Renard and Vallee records were reissued. Vallee's
entered
> the "Hit Parade" charts in March 1943 and stayed there until August,
racking
> up a month at No. 1.
>
> However the song and the movie came together, it was the start of a
> beautiful friendship.
>
> It's still the same old story
> A fight for love and glory
> A case of do or die...
> _________________________________________________________________
>
>
>
>