Jewish Stereo Types

Guilt doesn't seem like a promising direction. Let's try something else entirely: Video posted by omarov No, no, NO, they can't stop there! You can't have Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers not dance! (Go ahead, go full screen for it, you know you want to.) Video posted by UberDurable That was "Pick Yourself Up," music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Dorothy Fields, and it was written for the 1936 movie these clips came from, Swing Time . It's been covered and recovered , and was (almost) quoted by Barack Obama in his first Inaugural Address . *** We've run across Dorothy Fields before , but I hadn't mentioned that her father, Lew Fields (born Moses Schoenfeld), started out in theater as half of Weber and Fields --one of the most popular comedy teams in vaudeville--and then became a successful theater producer . Despite this show business background, Dorothy did anything but coast--even though a female lyricist and librettist was a rarity in her...

Well, actually, no, I cannot write a sonnet. However, that's the lyric in Irving Berlin's "Easter Parade." Like "White Christmas," it was a song in 1942's Holiday Inn , sung by Bing Crosby to Marjorie Reynolds: Video posted by soccerkrazy2 although it originally appeared in Berlin's 1933 revue "As Thousands Cheer." And, like "White Christmas," it had a movie constructed around it, 1948's Easter Parade , in which Judy Garland sings it to Fred Astaire: Video posted by Gregory Maldonado I don't think it's quite so successful that way, but it's a fun film with tons of great songs. (Don't miss "We're a Couple of Swells": Video posted by gem tracker Did Fred Astaire even know how not to be elegant?) The film is perhaps most famous for a number that was deleted-- Judy Garland performing "Mr. Monotony" in the outfit she later famously wore in Summer Stock's "Get Happy"...