New DVDs Capture Classic Movie Themes

DATE November 25, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Philip Furia discusses the life and career of Johnny
Mercer
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. I hope you're having a good holiday.

On this Thanksgiving edition, we're going to hear about the life and music of
a great American songwriter, Johnny Mercer. He wrote the lyrics to many now
classic songs. Here's just a few of them.

(Soundbite of a Johnny Mercer song being sung)

Unidentified Man #1: (Singing) You must have been a beautiful baby, you must
have been a wonderful child. When you were only starting to go to
kindergarten, I bet you drove the little boys wild. And when it came...

(Soundbite of a Johnny Mercer song being sung)

Unidentified Woman #1: (Singing) You're just too marvelous, too marvelous for
words, like glorious, glamorous and that old standby amorous. It's all so
wonderful. I'll never find the words that say enough, tell enough. I really
just start swelling up. You're much too much...

(Soundbite of a Johnny Mercer song being sung)

Unidentified Man #2: (Singing) I don't care what the weatherman says. When
the weatherman says it's raining, you'll never hear me complaining. I'm
sitting in sunshine. I don't care how the weather vane points. When the
weather vane points to gloomy, it's got to be sunny to me when your eyes look
into mine. Oh, jeepers, creepers, where'd you get those peepers? Jeepers,
creepers, where'd you get those eyes? Oh, gosh, how...

(Soundbite of a Johnny Mercer song being sung)

Unidentified Woman #2: (Singing) My mama done told me when I was in
pigtails, my mama done told me, `Hon, a man's gonna sweet talk and give you
the big eyes. But when the sweet talkin's done, a man is a two-faced, a
worrisome thing who'll leave you to sing the blues in a night.'

(Soundbite of a Johnny Mercer song being sung)

Unidentified Man #3: (Singing) I took a trip on a train and I thought about
you. I passed a shadowy lane, and I thought about you. Two or three cars
parked under the stars...

(Soundbite of a Johnny Mercer song being sung)

Unidentified Woman #3: (Singing) I remember you. You're the one who made my
dreams come true a few kisses ago.

(Soundbite of a Johnny Mercer song being sung)

Unidentified Man #4: (Singing) I wanna be around to pick up the pieces when
somebody breaks your heart, some, somebody twice as smart as I, a somebody who
will swear to be true as you used to do with me.

GROSS: Among the many Johnny Mercer lyrics that we couldn't squeeze into that
medley are "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home," "Come Rain or Come Shine," "Days
Of Wine and Roses," "Fools Rush In," "Horray for Hollywood," "Moon River,"
"One for my Baby," "Something's Gotta Give" and "That Old Black Magic."

Mercer's period of greatest popularity was between the mid-1930s and mid-'50s.
There were 221 weeks within that period when Mercer had at least one song in
the top 10. My guest, Philip Furia, is the author of a biography of Mercer
called "Skylark." It will be published in paperback December 9th. Furia is
also the author of "The Poets of Tin Pan Alley" and books about Irving
Berlin and Ira Gershwin. As part of his research for "Skylark," Furia
interviewed many of Mercer's surviving family, friends and colleagues. Mercer
was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1909 and died in 1976. The title of the
Mercer biography comes from a song he co-authored with Hoagy Carmichael.
Here's Carmichael's 1956 recording of "Skylark."

(Soundbite of "Skylark")

Mr. HOAGY CARMICHAEL: (Singing) Skylark, have you anything to say to me?
Won't you tell me where my love can be? Is there a meadow in the mist where
someone's waiting to be kissed? Skylark, have you seen a valley green with
spring where my heart can go a-journeying over the shadows and the rain to a
blossom-covered lane?

GROSS: Philip Furia told me that Johnny Mercer came from a different
background than his contemporaries in the pantheon of American popular song.

Mr. PHILIP FURIA (Author, "Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer"):
Mercer was the only Southerner in that whole group of largely New York Jewish
immigrants or descended from immigrants songwriters. The Gershwins, Berlin,
even Cole Porter, who came from Indiana, can sound more New Yorkish, more
urbane than anyone else. And here's Johnny Mercer from Savannah, an
Episcopalian choir boy, mingling with all of these sophisticated, hard-nosed,
New York Jewish songwriters. And I thought, `What a world for him to move
in.'

GROSS: Let's get to Johnny Mercer's first lyric that actually had a life
outside of his house, and that lyric is "Out of Breath." And this is a song
that he actually got into The Garrick Gaieties, which was a review, a musical
review. How did he write this song?

Mr. FURIA: Well, Johnny Mercer was a lyricist who, like most lyricists, wrote
lyrics after the music was completed. And he had a collaborator who had given
him a melody, and he worked and worked and worked on it. And actually, his
ambition was to be an actor. He really went to New York from Savannah wanting
to make it as an actor. And it was a bug that never let go of him. And he
went to The Garrick Gaieties and tried to get a role and they said, `No, we
don't need anymore actors. All we need are pretty girls and songs.' So he
went back to this melody that his collaborator had given him and worked and
worked and wrote many, many verses to it and took it over to the show and they
loved it. And it actually was featured very prominently in Garrick Gaieties.

GROSS: Had he not thought about writing lyrics before this?

Mr. FURIA: No, he had been doing that ever since he was about 15. He had
been writing lyrics in his usual style because he loved what were then called
race records, blues that were largely marketed to black audiences. And he
loved Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey and Louis Armstrong. And he wrote a lot of
very, very vernacular bluesy kinds of lyrics, but this was his first--"Out of
Breath" was his first review for a Broad--first song for a Broadway review.
And it has a kind of New York sophistication to it. He could be that urbane
New Yorker when he wanted to be.

GROSS: Well, let's hear Johnny Mercer singing "Out of Breath." And this was
recorded in 1971 when he appeared at the Lyrics and Lyricists series at the
92nd Street Y in New York. Here's Johnny Mercer.

(Soundbite from "Out of Breath")

Mr. JOHNNY MERCER (Lyricist): (Singing) Mine's a hopeless case, but there's
one saving grace. Anyone would feel as I do, out of breath and scared to
death of you. Love was first defined, then explored and defined, still the
old sensation is new. Out of breath and scared to death of you. It takes all
the strength that I can call to my command to hold your hand. I would speak
at length about the love that should be made, but I'm afraid. Hercules and
such never bothered me much. All you have to do is say, `Boo.' I'm out of
breath and scared to death of you.

(Soundbite of applause)

GROSS: That's Johnny Mercer singing the first song, the first lyric that
he wrote that actually got performed in a show and that was recorded in
1971. My guest is Philip Furia, who has written a new biography of Johnny
Mercer. It's called "Skylark."

Well, Johnny Mercer's song "Out of Breath" was performed in 1930 in Garrick
Gaieties. What were the typical ways of breaking into music for a young
songwriter at that time?

Mr. FURIA: Well, for a young songwriter in New York, the way you broke in was
through Tin Pan Alley, which was where all the sheet music publishers had
their offices and where so many songs were kind of mass produced, all most
assembly-line produced. And Johnny Mercer walked the pavements. He went to
various music publishers trying to get them to accept his songs. But it
really took a long time before--even though he could place a song here and
there in a Broadway review, it took him three or four years before he really
had a hit song.

GROSS: What was that first hit?

Mr. FURIA: First hit was a song he wrote with Hoagy Carmichael in 1933
called "Lazy Bones." And they sold the song to a publisher and they got a
recording of it and both of them at that time were so poor that the banks
wouldn't cash their royalty--their first royalty check was for, like, a
thousand dollars--because these guys looked so seedy. So one of the singers
who had recorded the song took it to her bank and got it cashed. But it was
their first big break.

GROSS: And...

Mr. FURIA: Well, it was Mercer's first big break. Carmichael had had a
couple of successful songs before that.

GROSS: And after working with Hoagy Carmichael, Mercer went on to be the
songwriter for the Paul Whiteman band. Hoagy Carmichael and Paul Whiteman had
already worked together. Was it typical for big bands then to have a
songwriter on staff?

Mr. FURIA: No, it was not typical, but Mercer was also a wonderful singer.
And he actually broke into Paul Whiteman's band by winning a national singing
contest. He was the New York champion. And then he won the national contest.
And Whiteman kept him on as singer, actually to replace Bing Crosby. Crosby
went to Hollywood and Whiteman needed someone who could sing very rhythmical,
jazzy tunes, and that was Mercer's talent. He had grown up listening to black
records and, you know, black church music as a kid, so he had a wonderful
sense of rhythm and jazz. And he sang with Whiteman for several years.

GROSS: My guest, Philip Furia, is the author of "Skylark: The Life and Times
of Johnny Mercer." It's about to be published in paperback. We'll talk more
after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Philip Furia, the author of a biography of lyricist Johnny
Mercer. It's called "Skylark."

Johnny Mercer wrote for Hollywood in two different parts of his life. How did
he get started writing for Hollywood? And Hollywood was another great way for
a songwriter to become known and for his songs to become known.

Mr. FURIA: Hollywood got interested in him when they heard him on the radio
singing with Paul Whiteman. And Mercer's singing voice on the radio came
across as if he were black. In fact, Whiteman had teamed him with his
trombonist, a great jazz trombonist, Jack Teagarden, and they were a kind of
Amos and Andy act and everyone listened and thought these were two blacks who
were, you know, talking dialogue back and forth and then breaking into song.
And RKO Studios had a producer who really loved that sound and invited Mercer
out to Hollywood to be an actor, a singer and a songwriter. It was kind of
like a triple threat. And Mercer still had that acting bug in him. He wanted
to make it. He wanted to be a movie star like Bing Crosby. He was just
astonished at the success Crosby had when he went out to Hollywood. And
Mercer thought, `This is going to happen to me.' And so he left a great job
with Paul Whiteman's band, went out to Hollywood, actually made two movies
and, as an actor, was a disaster. And wrote a few songs while he was out
there, wrote a song with Fred Astaire called "I'm Building up to an Awful
Letdown." But basically, his first adventure into Hollywood was a bust, and
they didn't renew his contract at RKO, and he was left high and dry.

GROSS: And then a song that he wrote after leaving Hollywood ended up
becoming his ticket back into Hollywood. That song was "I'm an Old Cowhand."
Tell the story of the song and how it changed his life.

Mr. FURIA: Well, after RKO canceled his contract, he realized how tough it
was to make it in Hollywood. And as he did so often in his life, he wanted to
get back home to Savannah, get back to his roots. And so he and his
wife--this is, you know, 1936--got in the car and drove from Hollywood to
Savannah. They'd never done that before and they never did it again. Took
them three days to drive across Texas. And as he was driving across Texas, he
was astounded at seeing these cowboys in big hats and with spurs on and they
were driving cars and trucks. And I think, you know, after his bad experience
in Hollywood, he kind of saw how ridiculous the image Hollywood portrayed of
the Western cowboy was. And here was, in fact, in Texas, life imitating art.
So the song came to him as they were driving. `I'm an old cowhand from the
Rio Grande, and I ride the range in my Ford V8.' So it was kind of, you know,
send-up of the Hollywood that he'd come to really despise. And also, you
know, just a very amusing look at the way these Texas cowboys were trying to
look like the ones in the movies.

GROSS: Mercer went to Hollywood hoping to have the kind of success he saw
Bing Crosby have, and Bing Crosby was the one who actually recorded "I'm an
Old Cowhand," turned it into a...

Mr. FURIA: Right.

GROSS: ...hit and a well-known song. How did Bing Crosby end up recording
it?

Mr. FURIA: Well, Crosby and Mercer were friends, actually, through their
wives. Johnny's wife, Ginger, had been a chorus girl, and she had made
friends with another chorus girl, Dixie Lee, who went on to marry Bing Crosby,
and also Dolores Hope, who married Bob Hope. So the three women were lifelong
friends. And as often happens, when the women are friend--the wives are
friends, the husbands become friends, too. So that Crosby kind of looked out
for Johnny Mercer and helped him along, particularly during those kind of
bleak, early years in Hollywood in the 1930s. He recorded songs with him or
he would sing songs either on recordings or in movies that Johnny Mercer had
written. So in some ways, he was kind of a mentor for Johnny Mercer.

GROSS: So Bing Crosby sang the song in the movie "Rhythm on the Range." And
here's Bing Crosby's 1936 recording of "I'm an Old Cowhand" with lyric by
Johnny Mercer.

(Soundbite of Big Crosby singing "I'm an Old Cowhand")

Mr. BING CROSBY: (Singing) I'm an old cowhand from the Rio Grande, but my
legs ain't bowed and my cheeks ain't tanned. I'm a cowboy who never saw a
cow, never roped a steer 'cause I don't know how, sure ain't a-fixin' to start
in now.

Singers and Mr. CROSBY: (In unison) Oh, yippie-yi-yo-ki-yay,
yippie-yi-yo-ki-yay.

Mr. CROSBY: (Singing) I'm an old cowhand and I come down from the Rio
Grande. And I learned to ride, ride, ride 'fore I learned to stand. I'm a
ridin' fool who is up to date. I know every trail in the Lone Star State
'cause I ride the range in a Ford V8. Oh...

Singers and Mr. CROSBY: (In unison) ...yippie-yi-yo-ki-yay, yip, yip, yip,
da, da, da, da, di, da, di, di, di, di, da.

GROSS: That's "I'm an Old Cowhand," recording in 1936 by Bing Crosby. And my
guest, Philip Furia, is the author of a biography of Johnny Mercer, who wrote
that song.

This is one of the few songs where Johnny Mercer wrote music and lyrics?

Mr. FURIA: He--well, he wrote several where he actually did music, too, even
though he could not read music and couldn't play a musical instrument. But it
was very much like Irving Berlin. He would hear not only a melody but
harmonies in his head and then he would go to a piano player and sing the song
and then the piano player would pick it up and then Mercer would work with him
playing the chords. I mean, it was really extraordinary. I interviewed his
former son-in-law who was a pianist who had written some songs with him like
that, and he said it took forever but he knew exactly the chords he wanted.
He could hear them in his head.

GROSS: Now when he was in Hollywood, Johnny Mercer fell in love with Judy
Garland. They had an affair. How long did that affair last?

Mr. FURIA: It started in 1941 and it was an on and off again affair that
lasted, really, until Judy Garland died. It was the most extraordinary thing
I learned about him in researching the book. That Judy Garland really was the
great, great love of his life, and she was about to get married to her first
husband and she really wanted an older man, and she was very interested in men
with literary and artistic qualities to them, and I think she fell deeply in
love with Johnny Mercer, but he was married and had just adopted a little
girl, and he had this Southern genteel principle that he did not believe in
divorce.

And Judy Garland had just finally gotten some success in "The Wizard of Oz,"
and realized, I think, that if word had gotten out that she was having an
affair with an older married man, that her career, after waiting so long to
take off, would have been in jeopardy. And she actually broke it off, and
Mercer never got over it and they renewed it several times until her death.
And at another point in 1960s, he actually asked Ginger for a divorce so that
he could finally marry Judy Garland. And his kids were grown by then, and he
was ready to walk out of the marriage. But again, it didn't take off. His
wife became deathly ill. Doctors told him that she was going to die very
soon. And he went in to see her in the hospital and she said, `Please don't
divorce me now.' And he said, `I'll stay with you as long as you live.' And
she recovered and lived for another 30 years.

GROSS: Philip Furia's biography of Johnny Mercer is called "Skylark." It's
about to be published in paperback. We'll talk more about Mercer and hear
more of his songs in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

Here's Judy Garland singing a lyric written for her by Johnny Mercer.

(Soundbite of Judy Garland singing Johnny Mercer's "That Old Black Magic")

Ms. JUDY GARLAND: (Singing) That old black magic has me in its spell. That
old black magic that you weave so well. Those icy fingers up and down my
spine, the same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine. The same old tingle
that I feel inside and then that elevator starts its ride and on and on I go,
round and round I go...

(Credits)

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: That's the theme from the film "Laura." Johnny Mercer wrote the
lyrics. Coming up, more on Mercer's movie songs, including "Moon River." We
continue our conversation with his biographer, Philip Furia. And music critic
Lloyd Schwartz plays great movie themes.

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Philip Furia, the
author of a biography of lyricist Johnny Mercer, called "Skylark." It's about
to come out in paperback. Mercer's songs include "Skylark," "Moon River,"
"The Days of Wine and Roses," "Come Rain or Come Shine," "Any Place I
Hang My Hat is Home," "I Thought About You" and "Hooray for Hollywood."
When we left off, Furia was talking about Johnny Mercer's secret affair with
Judy Garland. Furia told me that even most Hollywood insiders didn't know
about the affair.

Mr. FURIA: It was not well-known. In fact, in one Garland biography, there
was an interview with Mickey Rooney, who said in 1941, Judy Garland had
finally found the man she loved. And Rooney didn't know who it was. So it
was kept pretty secret. It just a few people in the family who knew about it.
But they said Johnny was just ga-ga over her. You couldn't even talk to him.
He'd just be staring straight forward and, you know, you'd have to kind of
snap your fingers in front of his face. But the fact that it happened in 1941
and was so heartrending for him, it was one of those great lucky breaks that
he was at that time starting to collaborate with Harold Arlen, and suddenly in
Mercer's lyrics--you know, before that, he'd written "Jeepers Creepers," and
"I'm an Old Cow Hand" and "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby," but suddenly
there comes this wrenching, agonizing pain into his lyrics. And he writes
"Blues in the Night," "One for My Baby." You know, there's a whole new depth
of emotion, and I'm sure it comes out of the affair with Garland. Also a new
kind of sensuality in things like "That Old Black Magic," which is a song he
wrote for her. So, you know, in a way, Judy Garland, although the love affair
didn't work out, she kind of became his muse, and in a way, Judy Garland did
that to Johnny Mercer.

GROSS: Why don't we hear one of the songs that Mercer wrote with Arlen in
this period? Why don't we listen to "One For My Baby"? And although this is
such a deeply felt song and such a kind of heartbreaking song, it was written
for the movie "The Sky's The Limit" and originally sung by Fred Astaire, who
gives it a much jauntier rendition...

Mr. FURIA: Mm-hmm. Yes.

GROSS: ...than what we're used to hearing from Sinatra.

Mr. FURIA: Yeah. Sinatra's rendition, I think, is the classic one, and he
captures all the pain. He once said, `A Johnny Mercer lyric is all the wit
you wish you had and all the love you ever lost,' and boy, he hit it with "One
For My Baby."

GROSS: Well, here's Frank Sinatra.

(Soundbite from "One For My Baby")

Mr. FRANK SINATRA: (Singing) It's quarter to three. There's no one in the
place, 'cept you and me. So set 'em up, Joe. I got a little story you oughta
know. We're drinking, my friend, to the end of a brief episode. Make it one
for my baby, and one more for the road. I got the routine. Put another
nickel in the machine. Feeling so bad, can't you make the music easy and sad.
I could tell you a lot, but you gotta be true to your code. Make it one for
my baby and one more for the road.

GROSS: That's Frank Sinatra singing "One For My Baby," music by Harold Arlen,
lyric by Johnny Mercer. And Johnny Mercer is the subject of a new biography
called "Skylark," written by my guest, Philip Furia.

So Johnny Mercer finally did have his success in Hollywood, but then what he
really wanted was a hit Broadway show.

Mr. FURIA: Oh, it just killed him that other Hollywood songwriters that he
was senior to, like Frank Loesser and Alan J. Lerner, they went out to
Broadway and they had these smash hits like "Guys & Dolls" and "My Fair Lady."
And Mercer could see that those shows would be immortal. They would be
revived over and over again. He always wanted that, and he never got it. He
had successful shows, like "Li'l Abner," but no one's ever revived it. And it
was just a--as one friend said, one of the big holes in his heart was his
inability to write a great Broadway musical.

GROSS: Now with Harold Arlen, he did write the songs for the show "St. Louis
Woman."

Mr. FURIA: Right.

GROSS: And that had a song that became a really big hit for him, "Come Rain
or Come Shine," but had "I Had Myself a True Love," which is another well
known song, and "Riding on the Moon," a great song that isn't as well-known
but some people still do it. How successful was the show?

Mr. FURIA: The show was a flop. It was supposed to have starred Lena Horne,
and that's why Mercer agreed to do it, because he had doubts about the book,
the script for the show. It was written by two black writers, Arna Bontemps
and Countee Cullen, and it's just a real clunker of a story. And Lena Horne
was approached by the NAACP, and they pressured her not to do it, because even
though the show was written by blacks, it has some pretty awful racial
stereotypes and a lot of kind of phony black dialect. And Lena Horne pulled
out of the show, and for Mercer, that was the end, even though they had a
wonderful new actress named Pearl Bailey, who had the secondary role. But
without a big-name star like Lena Horne and with that clunker of a book, that
great, great score, that Arlen-Mercer score, was pretty much lost except for
the big hit, "Come Rain or Come Shine," which they recorded when the show
opened. I think Margaret Whiting did a recording of that, and that was the
only thing he could salvage.

GROSS: Why don't we play a version of "Come Rain or Come Shine"? Why don't
we hear the Ray Charles version of it?

Mr. FURIA: OK.

(Soundbite from "Come Rain or Come Shine")

Mr. RAY CHARLES: (Singing) I'm gonna love you like no one's loved you, come
rain or come shine. High as a mountain, deep as a river, come rain or come
shine. I guess when you met me, it was just one of those things, but don't
ever get me, 'cause I'm gonna be true, well, if you let me. You're gonna love
me like no one's loved me, come rain or come shine. Happy together, unhappy
together, and wouldn't it be fine? Day may be cloudy or sunny, we're in or
are we out of the money. Yeah, but I'm with you always. I'm with you rain or
shine.

GROSS: That's Ray Charles singing "Come Rain or Come Shine," which was
written by Harold Arlen and lyricist Johnny Mercer for the show "St. Louis
Woman." And my guest, Philip Furia, is the author of a biography of Johnny
Mercer. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Philip Furia, the author of a biography of lyricist Johnny
Mercer called "Skylark." It's about to be published in paperback. Here's
Johnny Mercer as recorded in 1971 at the 92nd Street Y in New York as part of
its "Lyrics and Lyricists" series. He's being interviewed by the director of
the series, Maurice Levine.

(Soundbite from 1971 interview)

Mr. MAURICE LEVINE (Director, "Lyrics and Lyricists"): ...the least of that
classic question which everyone asks, what come first, the melody or the
lyric? And I gather, from what you've said, that you like to have a good
melody before you.

Mr. JOHNNY MERCER (Lyricist): With me, I prefer that.

Mr. LEVINE: Right.

Mr. MERCER: I much rather prefer that.

Mr. LEVINE: ...(Unintelligible) Roberts said the same thing.

Mr. MERCER: Yeah. Well, you know why? He feels music like a composer, and
so do I. So we understand the music. We know where the accents should come,
and I don't mean to sound conceited when I say this, but I've often had a lot
of good lyrics lost--by writing them first, because the guy doesn't understand
the meter that I want. I'd rather try and catch the mood of his tune than to
have him--now there are some exceptions. Mr. Rogers(ph) is magnificent, you
know, at writing two words. But I think most guys rather do it the other way.

GROSS: How did Johnny Mercer react to the musical changes of the 1950s when
rock 'n' roll was the music for young people, and it was crowding out American
popular song from the charts? It was competing with it.

Mr. FURIA: Well, Johnny Mercer, like so many of the other great, great
songwriters of his era, really resented the coming of rock 'n' roll, where,
you know, performers were writing their own songs, and you know, there was
just a complete fall-off in the quality of songs. Songs were being aimed at
the teen-age market. And you know, Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, those people
could complain about it, but they'd had their careers. The sad thing about
Mercer is that he was in his 40s, at the top of his form, and American popular
music was moving away from him, and it was agonizing for him. And Hollywood
musicals were starting to collapse because of the influx of television. They
were shutting down movie production, and musicals were the most expensive kind
of movies to make. There was less and less work for him writing scores for
movies. So it was really a bitter, bitter time for him, the 1950s.

GROSS: So here he was, here was Mercer feeling very embattled because of the
growing popularity of rock 'n' roll, and movies again saved him.

Mr. FURIA: Yeah. They weren't making many original movie musicals anymore.
They were pretty much just doing movie versions of shows that had been hits on
Broadway. But they still had what were called theme songs. A dramatic movie,
not a musical, might have a song attached to it, and that's what finally saved
Mercer. In the 1960s he teamed with Henry Mancini, and there was a movie
"Breakfast at Tiffany's," and Johnny Mercer had to go ask Mancini--I mean,
this was as far down as he was on his luck. He asked this young composer if
he could please, please work with him and try to write a song to Mancini's
melody for "Breakfast at Tiffany's." And Mancini was thrilled to collaborate
with Johnny Mercer.

And Mercer, as often he did with collaborators, he would get the music in his
head, and then he wanted to to be by himself. He didn't like to be in the
same room with the collaborator. And he would come back with sometimes two or
three lyrics, different lyrics, and say to the composer, `Which one do you
like?' And the one he actually wrote for "Breakfast at Tiffany's," the first
one he wrote was called "I'm Holly." (Singing) `I'm Holly, like I want to be,
like Holly on a tree back home.' And Mancini said, `Well, OK, that fits the
main character of the movie, Holly Golightly, but what else do you have?' And
he said, `Well, I've got this one that could either be called "Red River,"
"Blue River" or "Moon River."' And Mancini listened to it and just heard those
first three notes, (singing) "Moon River," and just knew at the time he was
going to win the Academy Award, just that wonderful opening. And suddenly
Mercer was back. He won the Academy Award, Andy Williams made a hit record of
it, and then the next year, he and Mancini won it again with "Days of Wine &
Roses." And it was a thrill. I mean, it was just one song a year, but he was
on talk shows and people knew his name again, so it was a kind of wonderful
comeback for him in the 1960s.

GROSS: What was it like to research this book and to talk to people who are
alive now and knew or worked with Johnny Mercer?

Mr. FURIA: It was surprisingly difficult for me, because I had known a
little bit about how he behaved when he drank. But so many people--and these
are people who absolutely adored him--told me these horrible, horrible stories
about him, that at cocktail parties he would curse at his wife and sometimes
would take his drink and pour it over her head at a party; that he would make
sexual overtures to daughters of his collaborators, even to one of his own
nieces, who told me this, and she was just revolted. I mean, she thought,
`I'd always been like a daughter to him. I was the same age as his daughter,
and he got drunk and made a pass at me.'

And I found that very difficult to write about. And the sad thing is that he
would attack everybody around him, and then, unlike some drunks who forget the
next morning, he would always remember, and that Southern proper upbringing
would come back, and he would feel terrible remorse and would inevitably send
a dozen roses to whomever he'd offended the next morning with this abject note
of apology. So, yeah, it was in some ways a horrible life that he would be so
abominable when he drank and then feel so guilty the next morning, and it was
just like--there was a while there I couldn't write about him. I found him so
repulsive a person when he drank.

GROSS: So you're in that position that we are with a lot of artists,
unfortunately...

Mr. FURIA: Yeah.

GROSS: ...which is learning how to keep loving the art while feeling
uncomfortable about the artist.

Mr. FURIA: Yeah. I'd never been in that position before, but finally, after
interviewing more people--and the interviews would get very, very emotional
sometimes as people talked about how much they loved him but then would
recount these grisly stories about him. And finally I began to see how
tormented he was. It was a torment that went all the way back to his
childhood and the kinds of tremendous expectations that his family made on him
to make everything right, to always be the kindest, most generous person, to
fix everything that went wrong in the family. And I just felt that there's
enormous pressure that when he drank, he could be bad; he could get out from
under that. And I began to feel a kind of sympathy for him that just built
and built, and then I could write.

GROSS: Well, Philip Furia, thank you so much for talking with us about Johnny
Mercer.

Mr. FURIA: It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Terry.

GROSS: Philip Furia's biography of Johnny Mercer is called "Skylark." It will
be published in paperback in a couple of weeks. Our interview was recorded
last December after the book was published in hardcover. Furia is a professor
of creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Here's
Ella Fitzgerald singing another Johnny Mercer song.

(Soundbite of music)

Ms. ELLA FITZGERALD: (Singing) You got to ac-cen-tuate the positive,
e-lim-inate the negative, latch onto the affirmative. Don't mess with Mr.
In-Between. You've got to spread joy up to the maximum, bring blues down to
the minimum, have faith, or pandemonium's liable to walk upon the scene. To
illustrate my last remark, Jonah in the whale, Noah in the ark. What did they
do, just when everything looked so dark? Man, they said, we better
ac-cen-tuate the positive, e-lim-inate the negative, latch onto the
affirmative. Don't mess with Mr. In-Between. No, don't mess with Mr.
In-Between.

GROSS: Coming up, music critic Lloyd Schwartz considers great movie themes.
This is FRESH AIR.

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Review: Favorite musical themes from movies just out on DVD
TERRY GROSS, host:

Some of the most memorable music written for the movies comes even before the
movie begins. The opening theme music, sometimes starting before the credits
roll, serves very different functions for different films. Classical music
critic Lloyd Schwartz talks about some of his favorite scenes from films now
available on DVD.

(Soundbite from "Gone with the Wind" theme song)

LLOYD SCHWARTZ:

That may be the most famous movie music ever written, Max Steiner's sweeping
heroic theme for "Gone with the Wind." Even if you didn't know the story--Is
there anyone who doesn't know the story?--you'd know that we were being set up
for a movie of high drama, passion and courage and great length. The theme
itself may be too simple for a composer to develop into a symphony, but its
succinctness is one of the qualities that makes it impossible to forget. What
most of us don't remember is that there's music that comes even before the
famous theme, a two-and-a-half-minute overture that suggests the happy,
peaceful life on the old plantation before the Civil War.

(Soundbite from "Gone with the Wind" music)

SCHWARTZ: "Gone with the Wind" has just reappeared in a new four-disc DVD set
with a gloriously restored print and lots of special features, including the
fascinating documentary that shows us the screen tests for the many actresses
who wanted the role of the decade, Scarlett O'Hara.

Max Steiner's score for "Gone with the Wind," which keeps us at a distance, is
very different from the opening music of a movie that isn't nearly as
well-known, but I think it's one of the real masterpieces of world cinema,
Federico Fellini's early "Vitelloni." It's an intimate story of five friends
who are trapped in the small Italian seaside town where they grew up, trapped
in their lives, suddenly becoming too old to act like kids but not yet ready
for real responsibility. Even before the credits roll, we see this would-be
rat pack lurching arm-in-arm down a deserted street after a night of drinking.

(Soundbite from "Vitelloni" theme music)

SCHWARTZ: The music, which pulls us immediately into the film, is by
Fellini's great musical collaborator, Nino Rota, and it captures Fellini's
affection and ironic nostalgia--one of the young bucks is surely himself--for
these guys and their heartbreaking hopelessness.

Jean Renoir's "The Golden Coach" uses music that was composed centuries before
movies were invented, and he uses it to suggest not so much sincerity as
artificiality. Filmed in ravishing, super-saturated color and starring that
great life force, Anna Magnani, "The Golden Coach" is about a troupe of 18th
century comedia del arte players who travel to South America. And it's one of
Renoir's most intricate explorations of how the boundary between art and real
life often blurs and the sacrifices artists are compelled to make of their
art. Renoir chose the perfect composer, Vivaldi, who instantly takes us back
to an earlier, a time of bustling energy, festivity and glittering artifice,
elegance with just a touch of the street.

(Soundbite from a Vivaldi composition)

SCHWARTZ: I'd like to end with a little closing music from a film that I
forgot had any music at all, the great horror film director Tod Browning's
bizarre, scary and poignant "Freaks," a 1932 classic about the underside of
life at a carnival sideshow. Seeing the film again after many years, I was
especially hit by the irony of the score, the way the few seconds of
lighthearted circus music at the very end, for example, make a chilling
commentary on all the horrors that have gone before.

(Soundbite of "Freaks" music)

SCHWARTZ: In all these films, music adds another dimension, another emotional
layer. We think of film as a visual medium, but it's impossible to imagine
these extraordinary movies without the music that goes with them.

GROSS: Lloyd Schwartz teaches creative writing at the University of
Massachusetts, Boston, and is classical music editor of the Boston Phoenix.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross. We all wish you a very happy Thanksgiving.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.