About "making hearts grow three sizes in one day"

"You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" by Albert Hague and Theodor Geisel, sung by Thurl Ravenscroft:

Video posted by horgemlingurinn

And here's a cover by Darius Rucker:

Video posted by Darius Rucker


To quote from Albert Hague's obituary in the The New York Times:

"When he played the song he wrote for the Grinch assignment to Theodore Geisel, Mr. Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) exclaimed, 'Any man who slides an octave on the word Grinch gets the job.'"

***

Whether you call him Dr. Seuss or Mr. Geisel, the children's book writer/lyricist was not Jewish. (Although he was actively anti-Nazi even prior to the US entering WWII, and produced many anti-Nazi political cartoons.)


The composer, however--Albert Hague--was Jewish. He was raised Lutheran, because his German Jewish parents felt that their Jewish heritage was a liability (and of course in Germany at that time it most certainly was), but as that provided no shield from the Nazis he and his mother fled Germany in 1937. He served in the US Army during WWII and began to identify as Jewish.

After the war he had a varied and busy career as a musician and performer, but is probably best known for for writing the music for the 1966 TV version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas and for his role as the music teacher, Mr. Shorofsky, in both the film and television versions of Fame, shown here singing a song he himself wrote the music for:

Video posted by mark1814

That song is from the Broadway musical The Fig Leaves are Falling, which he composed, with book and lyrics by Allan Sherman. (Yes, the Allan Sherman of "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah!" fame. Who was also Jewish.)

You definitely should read the entire Times' obituary quoted above, because what with one thing and another, Hague had quite an interesting life.

Comments

  1. The Darius Rucker version isn't showing up here. It could be a regional availability thing; I've found it elsewhere on Youtube. As it turns out, I like his country material better.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hmmm, it could well be regional availability, being that it's an officially provided track by his label. Yeah, it's a bit bland, but I haven't found a really different take on the song that I like...yet!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Note: Unfortunately, comments left when using Safari disappear into the ether. Chrome seems to work, though, which I’m sure is a total coincidence. Thank you for going that extra mile!

Popular posts from this blog

St. Nicholas Music, Inc.

A couple more for Chanukah!

Thank you, all those who have served in our military!