If you missed last week's Serenade Radio edition of Steyn's Song of the Week, we are airing it here at SteynOnline for the very first time:
In this show Steyn tells the story of what was for half-a-century one of the best known songs in America ...but so overwhelmingly associated with one singer that few others have gone near it. Click above to listen.
~This airing of our Serenade Radio Song of the Week is a special presentation of The Mark Steyn Club. Thank you for your kind responses to this series. Of last week's Serenade presentation, Gayla, a new member from Chicago this very day, says:
Mark, your Merry Widow tribute waltzed me to an annual membership.
Welcome aboard, Gayla. We're glad to have you!
Michael Seth, a First Quarter Founding Member, also enjoyed it:
Such an enjoyable and soothing episode... I had never considered the emotional progression of dialogue to song to dance in this way before. Also found the merchandising anecdote very amusing - some things never change.
Christine Page, a Maine Steyn Clubber, writes:
Such a gorgeous melody, and so much tragedy connected with it by an accident of history. Its transcendent beauty lives on — and if it ever finds that other half you speak of, the glory that would result is unimaginable.
By the way, I've always resented Alfred Hitchcock's misuse (imo) of 'The Merry Widow Waltz' as a sinister leitmotif in his movie Shadow of a Doubt. Some may think that it provides an effectively chilling counterpoint to evil, but I think the sheer loveliness of it so dilutes the menace of Joseph Cotten's 'Uncle Charlie' that if I had been Cotten, I'd have complained.
Oklahoma member Laura McIntyre poses an interesting question:
Mark, I read somewhere that the original title Merry Widow, in German, translates literally as The Lusty Widow. Is that correct?
Well, the original show in German is called Die lustige Witwe, Laura - and "lustig" sounds as if it ought to mean "lusty", but in fact it translates as fun, amusing, merry. So no, she wasn't a nymphomaniac - or une grande horizontale, as nobody seems to say anymore.
À propos Mark's line about "two hearts beating in three-quarter time for between five-sixths and seven-eighths of the day, nein?", Hugo in England muses:
This reminded me of a time-check I once heard on the BBC Third Programme (or 'Radio 3' as it had probably become by then): 'It is 12.34 and 56 seconds on the seventh of the eighth 9-0.'
My father, incidentally, hailed from 'Mittel-Europa'. He was born in Transylvania and as a child lived in three countries without moving house - which I presume to be Hungary, Romania and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, although he didn't elaborate beyond saying that in school they stopped speaking Romanian and had to learn Hungarian, or vice versa.
And finally a First Month Founding Member from the English Home Counties, John Lewis:
This was played at my father's funeral.
A quiet, kind and generous man. Also one of the last surviving WWII PoWs. He bore his incapacities in later life with stoicism and (usually) good humour. I still think about him every day and try not to let him down.
Thank you, John. We do enjoy your comments on the show. Steyn Club members are welcome to respond to this week's show below. Alternatively, anybody can leave them over at Serenade Radio, where they love hearing from listeners.
Steyn's Song of the Week airs thrice weekly on Serenade Radio in the UK, one or other of which broadcasts is certain to be convenient for whichever part of the world you're in:
5.30pm Sunday London (12.30pm New York)
5.30am Monday London (4.30pm Sydney)
9pm Thursday London (1pm Vancouver)
Whichever you prefer, you can listen from anywhere on the planet right here.
