Kate Smith

Whether they are behind the camera or in front of it, this is the place to discuss all filmmakers regardless of their role in the filmmaking process.
Post Reply
Big Magilla
Site Admin
Posts: 19312
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
Location: Jersey Shore

Re: Kate Smith

Post by Big Magilla »

Both Kate Smith and Vera Lynn, who just celebrated her 102nd birthday, were cheery optimists who could sing ballads as effectively as they sang those get-up-and-sing-along shout-it-to-the-rafters crowd-pleasers. They were capable of pathos in many of their songs, "The Last Time I Saw Paris", "The White Cliffs of Dover", Smith on "And We Were Lovers (Theme form The Sand Pebbles)", Lynn on "Lili Marlene", but it's difficult to picture either singing songs with the been-through-it-all pain of an Edith Piaf or Billie Holliday.

Neither Smith nor Lynn were very good actresses. They were only believable on screen as themselves. No one is ever going to make a movie about either of them.
Uri
Adjunct
Posts: 1230
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 11:37 pm
Location: Israel

Re: Kate Smith

Post by Uri »

It's interesting you mentioned Vera Lynn - I was thinking of her as some kind of an equivalent to Smith when it comes to "national chanteuses" - both seemed to lack the kind of grand pathos others - like Mercedes Sosa or Amália Rodrigues - had. There was always a safe aspect to them. And people who declare Judy Garland as the American Edith Piaf really get it wrong. I find Piaf - who was THE ultimate national chanteuse - to be, strangely as it may seem, a kind of a mashup of Kate Smith and Billy Holiday. But this kind of complex mixture - being an emblem of the highest form of a spirit of a nation and, at the same time, of the the darkest passions and miseries of human existence (not to mention sex) - is completely foreign to American (and indeed English) sensibility.
Big Magilla
Site Admin
Posts: 19312
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
Location: Jersey Shore

Re: Kate Smith

Post by Big Magilla »

Other English speaking countries for sure. She was big in England, despite the fact that most of the songs she recorded were covered there by Vera Lynn. The height of her popularity came during World War II when most of the world was cut off from American music, besides which there's no reason why her biggest hit, "God Bless America" should have resonated outside of the U.S.
Uri
Adjunct
Posts: 1230
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 11:37 pm
Location: Israel

Re: Kate Smith

Post by Uri »

Big Magilla wrote: one of the most iconic singers of 20th Century music.
One of the most iconic singers of 20th Century AMERICAN music. Unlike many other American singers, from Bessie Smith to Beyonce, from Al Johnson to Eminem, who , indeed, became international icons, her appeal never really transcended the US and maybe some other English speaking countries. She and her rather impersonal and unchallenging way of presenting a song (although, admittedly, she was a very good singer with a well mastered booming voice), were/are a very internal American phenomenon.
Big Magilla
Site Admin
Posts: 19312
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
Location: Jersey Shore

Re: Kate Smith

Post by Big Magilla »

I'll second that. "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" was one of the first songs I learned as a child.
danfrank
Assistant
Posts: 905
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 2:19 pm
Location: Fair Play, CA

Re: Kate Smith

Post by danfrank »

The conflation of sports watching with expressions of patriotism has always annoyed me. It’s bad enough that we have to endure the national anthem before every game. The addition of God Bless America after 9/11 was way over the top. The politics of whether to play the now-tainted Kate Smith version aside, I hope this new “tradition” fades away. The 7th inning stretch should have one and only one song associated with it, where we stand and sing together to celebrate the home team, peanuts, and Cracker Jack.
Big Magilla
Site Admin
Posts: 19312
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
Location: Jersey Shore

Re: Kate Smith

Post by Big Magilla »

Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" has had many interpretations over the years. Yankee Stadium is free to play whatever version they want, or none at all, but what it can't do is obliterate the memories of all those Yankee fans who saw and heard Smith sing the "Star-Spangles Banner" at game openers the stadium in the 1960s and 1970s or the fond memories generations of fans of one of the most iconic singers of 20th Century music.

As for the Flyers removing her statue, all I can say is putting her the same category as Robert E. Lee is as absurd as it is offesnive.

Personally, I knew nothing of Kate Smith's recordings prior to the 1960s than "God Bless America" and her signature song, "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain". However, from the early through mid-60s, she had a career resurgence that was hard to miss with multiple hit albums and a few hit songs on RCA Victor. She could sing "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" with as much conviction as Tony Bennett; "Moon River" better than Andy Williams; and "That's Life" better than Frank Sinatra. Hers was also one of the best of the many interpreters of The Beatles' "Yesterday" aside from the Beatles themselves.

The worst that can be said about her is that she was politically naive. She was typical of the maiden ladies of the era, as innocent as a cloistered nun. It was no wonder that she was the leading contender for playing the Mother Abbess in the film version of The Sound of Music before Peggy Wood was given the part.

Most of the more than 3,000 songs she recorded were selected for her, but she sang everything with conviction, whether she picked them out herself or was given them to sing by someone else.

"That's Why Darkies Were Born" was an unfortunate song for her to sing. Sung by Paul Robeson, it was full of irony, sung by a white woman, any white woman, it reeked of condescension, something that may have been lost on her as well as audiences of the day who might not have heard it if she hadn't recorded it.

"Piccaninny Heaven" is hard to defend. I don't know when the term referring to a black child went from being considered a term of endearment to the demeaning racial slur it is today, but the song itself which she sings in her 1933 film, Hello, Everybody!, would be just as offensive if it were about children of any race seen in an orphanage where they long to be reunited with their dead mothers in a heaven of any kind.

In any event, these were not songs that were in her repertoire to be sung over and over. Maybe that was because someone pointed out to her the fallacy of their being, or simply because she had so many better songs to sing.

Get rid of her recordings and her statue because times have changed and because she's no longer relevant to today's audiences who buy the tickets to your games, but don't trash her memory over perceived putdowns that would have been the furthest from the mind of this highly principled and moral icon of times gone by.
Reza
Laureate Emeritus
Posts: 10029
Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 11:14 am
Location: Islamabad, Pakistan

Re: Kate Smith

Post by Reza »

The plot thickens and keeps getting more and more hilarious in its absurdity.

Sad!!
Big Magilla
Site Admin
Posts: 19312
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
Location: Jersey Shore

Re: Kate Smith

Post by Big Magilla »

Kate Smith’s family ‘heartbroken’ after Yankees, Flyers distance themselves from singer
By Ted Holmlund

Kate Smith’s family said they are “heartbroken” that the Yankees and Flyers distanced themselves from the “God Bless America Singer” after learning she sang two racially insensitive songs in the 1930s.

Smith’s niece, Suzy Andron, and her husband Bob told USA Today Sports on Saturday night that they were surprised and upset by the recent stories that cast the late singer as racist for performing two songs entitled “That’s Why Darkies Were Born” and “Pickaninnies’ Heaven” in the early 1930s.

Both songs contain racist language and references, though the former has been characterized as satire. It also was performed at the time by Paul Robeson, who was black.

When the Yankees last month became aware of Smith’s history, they switched to a keyboard version of “God Bless America.” The Yankees had played the song in the middle of every game since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the insistence of late owner George Steinbrenner.

The Androns also told the website that Kate Smith, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor by Ronald Reagan in 1982 when her health was declining, did a lot for patriotic causes during World War II.

According to “Kate Smith: A Bio-Bibliography,” the late singer is credited with helping sell $600 million in war bonds during the war.
Bob Andron, 74, said he believes people are unfairly focusing on the two songs Smith performed early in her 20s when she was “trying to make her mark as a singer,” adding that Smith sang the pieces but did not write them.

“It’s somebody who found the words to two songs that she sang, out of 3,000 that she recorded, and tried to make a case out of it,” Bob Andron said. “And my heart goes out to them, too. Because they’re misguided. They don’t understand what kind of a person Kate Smith was.”
Suzy Andron helped take care of Smith in North Carolina before she died and said she never had any talks with her aunt about those particular songs.

She also strongly objected to the characterization that her aunt was as racist.

“[I’m] saddened that a woman who has been dead for almost 35 years would be attacked in this way,” she said. “Aunt Kathryn really did not see color. She didn’t see a person’s color. She was very in tune with a person’s character. I’ve always thought that was a model, to not see a person’s color but to see their character. And this is why I’m incredibly sad.”

The Androns are unhappy that Smith’s voice won’t be heard at Yankee Stadium anymore, and hope fans will sing “God Bless America” anyway.
“People can connect dots in different ways,” Bob Andron said. “These folks — whoever they were, bless them. They connected the wrong dots.”
Big Magilla
Site Admin
Posts: 19312
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
Location: Jersey Shore

Kate Smith

Post by Big Magilla »

Yankees’ ban of Kate Smith’s ‘God Bless America’ is a new PC low
By Post Editorial Board

The ridiculous excesses of political correctness have now stretched all the way to Yankee Stadium and Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center.
Both the Yankees and the NHL Flyers have banned Kate Smith’s famed 1943 recording of Irving Berlin’s classic “God Bless America.”

The Flyers — for whom the recording has long been a good-luck charm (Smith herself sang it live during the 1974 Stanley Cup final) — went even further: They’ve actually covered up a statue of the singer that stands outside the arena.

The Yankees have played the recording during the seventh-inning stretch ever since 9/11.

The problem? Two other songs Smith recorded during the 1930s contain lyrics and words that demean black people.

But the case isn’t clear-cut on one of the songs, “That’s Why Darkies Were Born.” Apart from the now-objectionable title, the lyrics — “Someone’s got to pick the cotton/Someone had to plant the corn” — can also be seen as an ironic and satirical comment on racism. That’s why noted African American singer and civil-rights activist Paul Robeson also recorded the song.

The other song Smith recorded, “Pickaninny Heaven,” clearly is demeaning. Sad to say, such songs once were all-too-commonly heard.
But they were also a product of their time and place. And if the nation bans everyone who ever sang such songs and pretends they never existed, it would have to wipe out pretty much the entire history of American film and music.

In pulling the Smith recording, the Yankees claimed to be “erring on the side of sensitivity.” They certainly erred — by caving to hysterical excess.
Post Reply

Return to “The People”