Toe in the Water

Happiness Is...

Happiness Is…

There’s a song that pops into my head on those rare occasions when I’m feeling irrationally happy. I didn’t know the name of the song until Andrea did her usual detective work and found it in YouTube. Not bad for using only my scant memory of the first few words of the song, hey? The rest was filled in by my dum-de-dum-dee-deeing through the melody.

It is fairly amazing that the song has remained in my memory for as long as it has. It dates from 1929 and nears it’s one hundredth birthday therefore. Believe it or not, that is way before my time and the only reason why I should know it at all is that it was played on the radio a few times in my youth. Such a strange little thing to have created so strong a home in my mind. There is no explaining the idiosyncrasies of the human brain.

The name of the song is The Wedding of the Painted Doll and it comes from a Broadway musical surely forgotten after all these years. Apart from the limitless memory of YouTube, of course. It’s a merry little tune that is perfect for expressing a mindless, inexplicable happiness similar to the mood that always awakens its memory in me.

I’ll put a link below to the YouTube film of the play for your interest. It’s one of those grand productions with a cast of hundreds of dancers, probably one of the very earliest of such creatures. Much of the dancing is surprisingly inventive and adept for the time. I particularly like the dance of the feller who is to conduct the wedding, for instance, and the scene where a giant ball is passed along a line of chorus girls is also very original.

Andrea commented with the sobering thought that the entire cast must be dead by now and those cheerful, fit and energetic performers in the clip had no thought of how they would one day be old and frail. Even that could not dent my happiness at remembering the song this morning, however.

Anyway, I’ll shut up now and let you enjoy the YouTube clip.




Word count: 368