LYRICIST LEO ROBIN AND COMPOSER RALPH RAINGER MADE A MEMORY.
ABOUT A SONG
Little could have been anticipated in 1937 by the songwriting team of composer Ralph Rainger and lyricist Leo Robin that their bittersweet duet between a divorced couple commissioned by Paramount Pictures for its Big Broadcast of 1938, would win the Academy Award as the year’s Best Original Song or would be the most familiar theme song of Network Radio’s Golden Age and far beyond - played whenever and wherever Bob Hope appeared for the next 60 years.
Rainger & Robin were a highly successful team in the 1930’s, producing such romantic hits for Bing Crosby and Paramount as Please, Blue Hawaii, It’s June In January and Love In Bloom, which later became Jack Benny’s theme song. (1)
But Thanks For The Memory was a love song of an altogether different character.
Arthur Marx quotes Leo Robin in his biography of Bob Hope: "It was an almost impossible assignment. Several other songwriters had already struck out. When the studio turned to Ralph and me, we were really challenged. After learning from the others’ mistakes, we managed to come up with a song that accepted the reality yet left you with the feeling that there was a large residue of nostalgia and a strong mutual affection between the two people.”
The two people are Buzz & Cleo Fielding, (Bob Hope & Shirley Ross), shipmates by chance on the S.S. Gigantic in its Transatlantic race with the S.S. Colossal. The divorced pair reacquaints at the ship’s cocktail bar and their exchange of Leo Robin’s words - some sung, some spoken - coupled with Ralph Rainger’s theme softly playing in the background, stands out for its simple heart-tugging reality in a film otherwise filled with overblown production numbers.
When Hope first heard the composers’ audition recording of Thanks For The Memory he sensed it would be a hit. Dorothy Lamour, who was signed to play a romantic lead in The Big Broadcast of 1938, shared his enthusiasm to such a degree that director Mitchell Leisen offered to take the song away from Hope & Ross and give it to her as a solo number. Fortunately, Lamour was good friend of Bob & Delores Hope from their New York days and turned the offer down.
The film itself, in which Hope received sixth billing behind W.C. Fields, Martha Raye, Dorothy Lamour, Shirley Ross and Lynne Overman, was released by Paramount to mixed reviews in February, 1938.
Variety’s luke-warm review of The Big Broadcast of 1938 cited operatic singer Kirsten Flagstad’s Wagnerian aria, Die Valkyrie, as the musical highlight of the film. It merely mentions Thanks For The Memory in passing.
Frank Nugent in The New York Times blasted the movie as, “…a hodge podge review of loose ends and tatters,” but added, “…Bob Hope and Shirley Ross acquit themselves commendably, meanwhile, in ‘Thanks For The Memory.’”
Damon Runyon was one of the few critics who recognized subtle greatness of the Hope & Ross duet and foresaw the song’s future recognition. Runyon wrote in The New York Journal-American, “ …What a delivery, what a song and what an audience reception!”
The five minute scene from The Big Broadcast of 1938, posted here as Broadcast.mov. confirms Runyon’s opinion of the performance. It's well worth the wait to download. It’s a classic. (2)
The 11th Annual Academy Awards honored Thanks For The Memory as the Best Original Song on February 23, 1939. (3) By that time, Shep Fields' novel Rippling Rhythm arrangement of the song had become the tenth best selling record of 1938.
Of greater impact, Thanks For The Memory had received weekly nationwide exposure to over 30 Million listeners on Hope's new NBC Pepsodent Show every Tuesday night for the previous six months. It was the comedian’s adopted theme song with newly paraphrased lyrics to close every week‘s program. His first show from September 27, 1938, features the Six Hits & A Miss vocal group with a shortened paraphrase of its first few bars to introduce the program and Hope followed with his first show-closing adaptation. (4) A pattern was established that brought composers Rainger and Robin a wealth of unexpected royalties.
Hope’s broadcast of March 7, 1939, with (then) starlet, 16 year old Judy Garland, stands out with its lengthy mid-show dialogue based on Garland’s ballad, It Had To Be You. The program continues the use of Thanks For The Memory in every broadcast. But that practice came to an abrupt halt on January 1, 1941, when Network Radio and most independent broadcasters began their ten month boycott of ASCAP licensed music in protest to the group’s demands for a 100% increase in its fees. (5)
When the dispute was resolved in late October, 1941, Thanks For The Memory returned to accompany Hope wherever he went, as in the broadcast from the Hollywood Canteen with Katherine Hepburn on October 13, 1942. (6)
Hope’s guest on his first broadcast of the 1943-44 Season, September 21, 1943, was his frequent Paramount co-star and Network Radio superstar in his own right, Bing Crosby. (7) Thanks For The Memory is played as background to the comedian‘s closing monologue describing his summertime USO tour to the war zones.
By The Pepsodent Show of January 30, 1945, from Drew Air Force base in Tampa, World War II was in its final year and the song received a strong vocal and instrumental treatment at the show’s closing when Hope and guest Edward G. Robinson joined to promote the sale of U.S. War Bonds and lead a massive “Happy Birthday” cheer from the audience to President Roosevelt. (8)
Our last sampling of Hope’s use of Thanks For The Memory in his peak Network Radio years comes from December 4, 1945, his return to NBC's Hollywood studios after several hundred Tuesday night remote broadcasts from military installations. Fittingly, Frances Langford and Jerry Colonna, who frequently accompanied Hope on trips to entertain the troops, both on and off the air, are featured in this show in which Jimmy Durante performing his hilarious novelty, The Lost Chord. (See Hope From Home, “Professor” Jerry Colonna and Goodnight, Mr. Durante…)
Bob Hope remained on NBC Radio until 1955 and NBC Television until 1996. He continued entertaining troops overseas in the Korean and Viet Nam wars, whenever and wherever he was requested, displaying the pace of a man half his age. He died on July 27, 2003, at the age of 100.
The song played at his memorial service was 65 years old, familiar to everyone attending and more appropriate than ever.
(1) Composer Ralph Rainger was killed in a 1942 plane crash but lyricist Leo Robin’s career extended into the 1960’s, collaborating with other great composers including Hoagy Carmichael and Jerome Kern.
(2) Again our thanks to technical consultant Mark Durenberger for helping GOld Time Radio establish its video legs.
(3) Rainger & Robin’s Thanks For The Memory won the Oscar over Irving Berlin’s Change Partners and Jeepers Creepers by the team of Harry Warren & Johnny Mercer plus seven other nominees).
(4) Bob Hope’s first Tuesday night season-average Hooperating on NBC was 15.4 which ranked him 12th in the Annual Top 50. It preceded his run of eleven Top Ten seasons that began in 1939-40 and ran throughout the decade. Included in this run were five seasons, (1941-42 to 1946-47), when Hope’s was Network Radio’s most popular program.
(5) During this period Hope substituted the melody to The Breeze & I, (aka Andalucia), by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona as the melody for his weekly show closing.
(6) Bob Hope began his broadcasts for military audiences in May, 1941.
(7) Bob Hope is credited with introducing two Academy Award winning songs, Thanks For The Memory, (1938), and Buttons & Bows, (1948). Bing Crosby introduced four: Sweet Leilani, (1937), White Christmas, (1942), Swinging On A Star, (1944), and In The Cool, Cool, Cool of The Evening, (1951).
(8) FDR died ten weeks later on April 12,1945.
Copyright © 2019, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
Little could have been anticipated in 1937 by the songwriting team of composer Ralph Rainger and lyricist Leo Robin that their bittersweet duet between a divorced couple commissioned by Paramount Pictures for its Big Broadcast of 1938, would win the Academy Award as the year’s Best Original Song or would be the most familiar theme song of Network Radio’s Golden Age and far beyond - played whenever and wherever Bob Hope appeared for the next 60 years.
Rainger & Robin were a highly successful team in the 1930’s, producing such romantic hits for Bing Crosby and Paramount as Please, Blue Hawaii, It’s June In January and Love In Bloom, which later became Jack Benny’s theme song. (1)
But Thanks For The Memory was a love song of an altogether different character.
Arthur Marx quotes Leo Robin in his biography of Bob Hope: "It was an almost impossible assignment. Several other songwriters had already struck out. When the studio turned to Ralph and me, we were really challenged. After learning from the others’ mistakes, we managed to come up with a song that accepted the reality yet left you with the feeling that there was a large residue of nostalgia and a strong mutual affection between the two people.”
The two people are Buzz & Cleo Fielding, (Bob Hope & Shirley Ross), shipmates by chance on the S.S. Gigantic in its Transatlantic race with the S.S. Colossal. The divorced pair reacquaints at the ship’s cocktail bar and their exchange of Leo Robin’s words - some sung, some spoken - coupled with Ralph Rainger’s theme softly playing in the background, stands out for its simple heart-tugging reality in a film otherwise filled with overblown production numbers.
When Hope first heard the composers’ audition recording of Thanks For The Memory he sensed it would be a hit. Dorothy Lamour, who was signed to play a romantic lead in The Big Broadcast of 1938, shared his enthusiasm to such a degree that director Mitchell Leisen offered to take the song away from Hope & Ross and give it to her as a solo number. Fortunately, Lamour was good friend of Bob & Delores Hope from their New York days and turned the offer down.
The film itself, in which Hope received sixth billing behind W.C. Fields, Martha Raye, Dorothy Lamour, Shirley Ross and Lynne Overman, was released by Paramount to mixed reviews in February, 1938.
Variety’s luke-warm review of The Big Broadcast of 1938 cited operatic singer Kirsten Flagstad’s Wagnerian aria, Die Valkyrie, as the musical highlight of the film. It merely mentions Thanks For The Memory in passing.
Frank Nugent in The New York Times blasted the movie as, “…a hodge podge review of loose ends and tatters,” but added, “…Bob Hope and Shirley Ross acquit themselves commendably, meanwhile, in ‘Thanks For The Memory.’”
Damon Runyon was one of the few critics who recognized subtle greatness of the Hope & Ross duet and foresaw the song’s future recognition. Runyon wrote in The New York Journal-American, “ …What a delivery, what a song and what an audience reception!”
The five minute scene from The Big Broadcast of 1938, posted here as Broadcast.mov. confirms Runyon’s opinion of the performance. It's well worth the wait to download. It’s a classic. (2)
The 11th Annual Academy Awards honored Thanks For The Memory as the Best Original Song on February 23, 1939. (3) By that time, Shep Fields' novel Rippling Rhythm arrangement of the song had become the tenth best selling record of 1938.
Of greater impact, Thanks For The Memory had received weekly nationwide exposure to over 30 Million listeners on Hope's new NBC Pepsodent Show every Tuesday night for the previous six months. It was the comedian’s adopted theme song with newly paraphrased lyrics to close every week‘s program. His first show from September 27, 1938, features the Six Hits & A Miss vocal group with a shortened paraphrase of its first few bars to introduce the program and Hope followed with his first show-closing adaptation. (4) A pattern was established that brought composers Rainger and Robin a wealth of unexpected royalties.
Hope’s broadcast of March 7, 1939, with (then) starlet, 16 year old Judy Garland, stands out with its lengthy mid-show dialogue based on Garland’s ballad, It Had To Be You. The program continues the use of Thanks For The Memory in every broadcast. But that practice came to an abrupt halt on January 1, 1941, when Network Radio and most independent broadcasters began their ten month boycott of ASCAP licensed music in protest to the group’s demands for a 100% increase in its fees. (5)
When the dispute was resolved in late October, 1941, Thanks For The Memory returned to accompany Hope wherever he went, as in the broadcast from the Hollywood Canteen with Katherine Hepburn on October 13, 1942. (6)
Hope’s guest on his first broadcast of the 1943-44 Season, September 21, 1943, was his frequent Paramount co-star and Network Radio superstar in his own right, Bing Crosby. (7) Thanks For The Memory is played as background to the comedian‘s closing monologue describing his summertime USO tour to the war zones.
By The Pepsodent Show of January 30, 1945, from Drew Air Force base in Tampa, World War II was in its final year and the song received a strong vocal and instrumental treatment at the show’s closing when Hope and guest Edward G. Robinson joined to promote the sale of U.S. War Bonds and lead a massive “Happy Birthday” cheer from the audience to President Roosevelt. (8)
Our last sampling of Hope’s use of Thanks For The Memory in his peak Network Radio years comes from December 4, 1945, his return to NBC's Hollywood studios after several hundred Tuesday night remote broadcasts from military installations. Fittingly, Frances Langford and Jerry Colonna, who frequently accompanied Hope on trips to entertain the troops, both on and off the air, are featured in this show in which Jimmy Durante performing his hilarious novelty, The Lost Chord. (See Hope From Home, “Professor” Jerry Colonna and Goodnight, Mr. Durante…)
Bob Hope remained on NBC Radio until 1955 and NBC Television until 1996. He continued entertaining troops overseas in the Korean and Viet Nam wars, whenever and wherever he was requested, displaying the pace of a man half his age. He died on July 27, 2003, at the age of 100.
The song played at his memorial service was 65 years old, familiar to everyone attending and more appropriate than ever.
(1) Composer Ralph Rainger was killed in a 1942 plane crash but lyricist Leo Robin’s career extended into the 1960’s, collaborating with other great composers including Hoagy Carmichael and Jerome Kern.
(2) Again our thanks to technical consultant Mark Durenberger for helping GOld Time Radio establish its video legs.
(3) Rainger & Robin’s Thanks For The Memory won the Oscar over Irving Berlin’s Change Partners and Jeepers Creepers by the team of Harry Warren & Johnny Mercer plus seven other nominees).
(4) Bob Hope’s first Tuesday night season-average Hooperating on NBC was 15.4 which ranked him 12th in the Annual Top 50. It preceded his run of eleven Top Ten seasons that began in 1939-40 and ran throughout the decade. Included in this run were five seasons, (1941-42 to 1946-47), when Hope’s was Network Radio’s most popular program.
(5) During this period Hope substituted the melody to The Breeze & I, (aka Andalucia), by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona as the melody for his weekly show closing.
(6) Bob Hope began his broadcasts for military audiences in May, 1941.
(7) Bob Hope is credited with introducing two Academy Award winning songs, Thanks For The Memory, (1938), and Buttons & Bows, (1948). Bing Crosby introduced four: Sweet Leilani, (1937), White Christmas, (1942), Swinging On A Star, (1944), and In The Cool, Cool, Cool of The Evening, (1951).
(8) FDR died ten weeks later on April 12,1945.
Copyright © 2019, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
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