The Colby Echo

Issue date: 3/2/07 Section: Opinions

Last week I was surfing channels on my television when I happened on Turner Classic Movies, stayed by a husky female voice that I hadn't heard in years. Most of you out there aren't familiar with that voice, but those of us who were around in the forties and fifties will never forget it. The sexy but sisterly voice belonged to an actress named June Allison (at least her Hollywood name), who was a tiny but tomboy, genuine girl next door-who died in her nineties last year.

The other voice, again inimitable, was Jimmy Stewart's, everyone's BOY next door, the guy with the stammer, very tall, lean to thin, "authentic," a loveable na'f who always came to the most decent decision. In the film, Jimmy was playing Glenn Miller, a real-life, popular big band leader from the swing era-from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s.

Again, my student readers of the Echo, born in the 1980s, have probably never heard of Glenn Miller, except occasionally on vintage jazz radio (and rarely there because the Miller sound wasn't "real" jazz; most of the swing bands of that era were relentlessly white). But The Glenn Miller Story, made in 1954, was the stuff of Hollywood success at the box office in the mid-fifties. An aside: anachronistically, June wears 1950s dresses in 1935-45 film time.

TCM spruced up the 1954 film for us in 2007 by adding color to the black-and-white original (Turner colors most of its classics so as to make them "palatable" for contemporary audiences, who see all their films in color). But the film's plot is still kind of appealing fifty years after The Glenn Miller Story was a moderate success when it played every theatre around in the fifties.

To paraphrase, Jimmy/Glenn is a struggling trombone player who wants to lead his little band into the big time in NYC, but first he has to woo and win June/Helen, a quintessential small-town girl from Boulder, CO. He is successful, naturally, eloping with his girl to New York where he is playing. Helen believes in her new husband and lots of kissing and his dream; then everything works. He uses a clarinet lead in his orchestrations, thus establishing the Miller "sound." Miller is a smash on stage, screen, and radio.

Ask Granddad about Miller's signature hits: "String of Pearls," "Tuxedo Junction," "Moonlight Serenade," "Pennsylvania 6-5000," "Little Brown Jug," "In the Mood." The movie ties all of these titles to lovers' symbols in the Millers' marriage (certainly phony), but the success of the band and the marriage (with adopted children) melts us.

Then comes World War II, and Glenn takes the band overseas as the Army Air Corps. Orchestra to entertain the troops. When we saw him taking a small plane to Paris, we were all well aware that he will never be seen again. Fade to June/Helen weeping but brave. Few eyes were dry in theatres as well; World War II was only a decade past.

We've come a long way from the Miller swing "sound"-folk in the fifties-sixties, rock in the seventies, rap, hip-hop, etc., etc. Still, my cable TV plays "Big Band & Swing" on Channel 427 around the clock; Miller comes up every 15 minutes or so. I can't listen without hearing June Allison and Jimmy Stewart. Maybe their movie was soppy and sentimental, but you oughta try the music.

I'll play it for you on Jazz with Chas. Thursdays at two on WMHB 89.7 FM. I just wish June Allison were there to kiss me, too.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools