Turn on the bubble machine

Come every Saturday Night I am about to bust out of my geriatric skin from needing to express high praise for those old Lawrence Welk shows.  Laugh at them if you will, and I know you will, but the fellow with the funny accent hired world class performers for his musical family. I am awed at the talent, training, musicianship and showmanship in those shows.  OK, so it's corny and hokey by today's showbiz standards.  What's new ain't always better.

STRANGE FRUIT

That song, first recorded by Billie Holiday, might be the first social commentary protest song.  Most unusual for 1939 when Ella Fitzgerald did her jazzy version of "a-tisket a-tasket, the old nursery rhyme. Today's generation and probably at least one before it grew up with "message" songs about some social issue.  No so for me.  Songs were for fun and romance. "Strange Fruit" is  about a lynching. The word doesn't appear but but the meaning is there.

RANDOM HARVEST

Random Harvest.  A sweet amnesia story.  Maybe a bit predictable but who cares.  I watched it because TCM host guy  Robert Osborne and guest programmer Gene Wilder said it had two great speaking voices, Ronald Coleman and Greer Garson.  It wouldn't be real hard to work up a tear over the Smithy and Paula tale.  Wilder said it does it for him. Too bad I could not stay up for the next TCM oldie, "The Merry Widow" from 1934.