[78-L] Happy 100th, Johnny Mercer

[Randy Skretvedt]

I saw the Johnny Mercer documentary on TCM last night. Cluttered. I think
that's the best adjective for it. I would like to see a three-hour cut which
allowed all of those clips to play out fully, or see about half of the clips
omitted from the 90-minute version they showed.

As it was, they tried to cram everything including the kitchen sink into it,
which meant that instead of just one person singing "Lazybones," they showed us
this:

Famous Singer one: Lazybones, sleepin' in the sun, how you 'spec' to

JARRING CUT TO Famous Singer two (with jarring key change as well): get your
day's work done? Never get your

JARRING CUT TO Famous Singer three (with another dissonant key change): day's
work done, sleepin' in the

VOICE OVER NARRATION COMES IN AT THIS POINT: I think the brilliance of Johnny's
lyrics was that he

CUT TO CLOSE UP OF TALKING HEAD; rest of lyric indistinct or omitted

This was put together by someone who concentrated almost entirely on the visual,
which meant that the point of the whole show, Johnny Mercer's words, were so far
in the background as to be unnoticeable. I'm not sure the producer/director
understood that 95 percent of the time, Mercer was a lyricist only. Yes, he
wrote the music to "Strip Polka," "Dream," "G.I. Jive," "Something's Gotta Give"
and many other good songs, but he was mainly a lyricist, and his words were
given very, very short shrift.

Most of the best stuff in the show came from a couple of talk shows Johnny did
in England in the early '70s. There was one moment when it was just he and the
host and a pianist, and Johnny began singing "I'm Old Fashioned," just sitting
with the host and singing a capella. The pianist began to play some chords and
Johnny began to really get into the song, his eyes growing faraway as he really
began to reveal all the tenderness and beauty in the lyric, and then there was
another ABRUPT CUT to Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth dancing to a tacky
chica-chica-boom-chic arrangement of it from "You Were Never Lovelier" -- an
INSTRUMENTAL, mind you, with no lyric at all!

I believe this may have been the point where I screamed at my television, "G**
D*** IT, LET HIM SING THE F*****G SONG!!" However, there were other times when
I was thinking the same thing.

Beyond those problems, Mercer's story was told in a very non-linear and
disorganized fashion--they started talking about his work with Benny Goodman on
radio in 1939 about 3/4 of the way through the show, after they'd already
covered several events that came later in his life.

Man, would I have loved to edit this one.

A better tribute to Mercer would have been just to show those two British talk
shows, with Mercer's thoughts, and his work, uninterrupted.

Anyway, it's worth seeing but be forewarned.

--Randy Skretvedt