[Dixielandjazz] Re: "As Time Goes By"

[TCASHWIGG at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/10/05 10:20:33 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
bhaesler at bigpond.net.au writes:

> 
> Hadda Brooks (1916-2002).
> Sorry Tom. I can't recall a female boogie pianist appearing in Casablanca,
> nor does my current research reveal one. (Can anyone else recall her?)
> I have a reference that pianist Sam's role in Casablanca was originally
> intended to be taken by a woman - either Hazel Scott, Lena Horne, or Ella
> Fitzgerald.
> I suspect that Ms Brooks would have been unknown to Hollywood when
> 'Casabanca' was made. Her first single, "Swingin' The Boogie", came out in
> 1945. Her first film, 'Out of The Blue', was made in 1947.
> Kind regards,
> Bill

Hi Bill:

I have no doubt about Elliott being the piano player, but I am certain Hadda 
was in the film with Bogey, and if I go down to the archives I can probably 
find a poster or photo of her from the movie out of her promotional folder.  I 
do know she was in the Columbia Pictures film "In a Lonely Place" with Bogey as 
a lounge performer, in which she recorded the Ray Noble torch song "I hadn't 
anyone but you"  for Harry Cohn, when she had some problems lip synching with 
the tune trying to follow Harry's constant directions, Bogey stepped in and 
told Harry to "leave her alone, there was no way you can make a Shirley Temple 
out of a Judy Garland."   Her next film was "The Bad and the Beautiful" with 
Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner.  So yes I could be wrong about  her role or none 
role in Casablanca.

While she indeed got her start as a Boogie Woogie piano player on records for 
Modern Records she was an accomplished classically trained pianist long 
before that.

She was born in East Los Angeles and Hollywood certainly knew about her, she 
was strikingly Beautiful and well preserved even at age 76 when I met and 
worked with her.

She however could and did often drink many a younger man or woman under the 
table, got her into a bit of trouble from time to time as she was not a happy 
Drunk but a nasty one often snapping at her audience and getting into trouble 
with the employers.

I heard her once tell the boss at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco that he 
could take his job and put it where the sun never shined and that she had 
been fired from better gigs than his before he was born.   ROTFLOL.

It was true too.

Cheers,

Tom Wiggins