I learn about Joseph Schmidt

Technically, if I wish to be painfully precise about word meanings, I cannot feel nostalgia for something I have not experienced.  I can't long to return to a place or time where I have not been.  But I can have a love of learning about things that happened before I was born or when I was too young to know about them. Harry Heuser puts it perfectly as "keeping up with the out-of-date" in his Broadcastellan Blog.

I  knew nothing of Joseph Schmidt until I watched a most fascinating TV documentary. A Rumanian born operatic tenor, he was  apparently an earlier version of Mario Lanza. A superb singer, very good actor, romantic movie star, much  loved in Germany and the Netherlands during the '30s.  All this in spite of being only five feet tall, standing on a platform so as not to be dwarfed by his leading ladies.   He died in 1942.

Does anybody remember  Joseph Schmidt  these days? Does anybody care?  I care.  That's why I blog.

His story:   http://www.dutchdivas.net/tenors/josephschmidt.html