by Lee Price
The Voice of America in 1945
Opening with the most gripping flirtation scene ever filmed, set against a backdrop of hellish flames, A Matter of Life and Death (1946) never falters in the sweep of its storytelling. With this one-of-a-kind masterpiece, ever-ambitious filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger attempted to entertain in the foreground with one of the all-time great screen love stories while simultaneously promoting a positive post-WWII relationship between England and the US. Filmed immediately following the war’s end, it landed right in the middle of a mind-boggling string of Powell/Pressburger masterpieces, directly following I Know Where I’m Going! (1945) and preceding Black Narcissus (1947). In their professional partnership as leaders of “The Archers,” Powell primarily served as director and Pressburger as screenwriter, working in a relationship that allowed maximal creative freedom for both.
To address the matter of Anglo-American relations in A Matter of Life and Death, Powell and Pressburger cast a somewhat cynical eye on the culture of each country. Naturally, one of their targets was the American music that had just swept across the war-torn countries of Europe, always keeping company with the American soldiers. Within the Archers’ division of responsibilities, music tended to fall to Emeric Pressburger, who was professionally trained as a violinist and had briefly played in a Hungarian orchestra before the war. Therefore, it probably fell to Pressburger to select the representative song that all Europe would immediately recognize as distinctly American. What else but Phil Moore’s “Shoo Shoo Baby”? Everyone would know that one!
Somehow I missed “Shoo Shoo Baby” while growing up in the 1960s, fervently watching old horror movies, Bowery Boys, and Abbott & Costello on Saturday morning TV. I know that “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” sung by the Andrews Sisters, became permanently locked in my brain, inextricably entangled with Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, and their slapstick basic training in Buck Privates (1941). A few years later, Bette Midler cemented my love for the song with her popular revival. But the Andrews Sisters’ nearly-as-popular and just-as-catchy “Shoo Shoo Baby” faded even as “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” endured.
In 1944, “Shoo Shoo Baby” was everywhere—playing on every jukebox and covered on nearly every radio variety show. Phil Moore wrote it in 1943, Georgia Gibbs introduced it to the world on the Camel Caravan radio program on October 23, 1943, and then the records started coming out. Liz Tilton released the song first, accompanied by Jan Garber and His Orchestra in November. Her version didn’t click, but the next two did. In December 1943, Ella Mae Morse took “Shoo Shoo Baby” to the top of the R&B charts, where it stayed at #1 for two weeks. And then the big one: Also recorded in December, the version by the Andrews Sisters with Victor Schoen and His Orchestra took fire right after the Ella Mae Morse version and it hovered near the top of the Billboard pop charts for almost three months. In early 1944, it was a monster hit dominating the jukeboxes of America and Europe. Everyone was playing it.
Written when Phil Moore was 26 years old and busy with his full-time work arranging music at MGM, the lyrics are more ambiguous than the standard interpretation. Most sources call it a lullaby, implying that the lyrics are directly quoting a mother explaining to her crying baby the departure of the “big tall papa” for service in the Navy. But it could just as easily be understood as Ella Mae or the Andrews Sisters singing directly to the woman who has “a tear in the corner of her eye” as her lover says his last goodbye. I’m not entirely convinced that “baby” has to refer to a genuine baby or that “papa” needs to refer to a genuine father. “But papa’s gotta be rough now/So that he can be sweet to you another day,” sounds more like advice to the woman rather than the baby to me. Whichever way you hear it though, it’s perfectly aligned with the home front mood in 1943, a time of many tearful partings.
The song opens with a slow-tempo dramatic prelude that sets the scene and then settles into a pleasant pop swing. While it’s catchy enough to justify its hit status, the song really hits pay dirt in the Andrews Sister version when they add a bridge that puts Patty Andrews clearly in charge: “Quiet!!!” she belts out. “I want a little bit of quiet in the house, please,” with the line then repeated call-and-response style by sisters LaVerne and Maxene, taking the song into the stratosphere. It’s startling and delightful—the Andrews Sisters at their fun-loving best. You hear that and you know why the song was a hit.
And then suddenly everyone was covering “Shoo Shoo Baby”: Nat “King” Cole, Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller, Sid Collins, Stan Kenton, Joe Loss, Dinah Shore, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Dinah Washington… Plus, four movies featured “Shoo Shoo Baby” in 1944: The Andrews Sisters performed it in Follow the Boys (aka Three Cheers for the Boys), Ella Mae Morse in South of Dixie, Ida James with Bob Chester and His Orchestra in Trocadero, and Jane Frazee in Beautiful But Broke. In addition, the song received an unusual form of immortality as the proud nickname (Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby, with that one extra “Shoo” added) of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress that is now preserved at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.
Frequent Andrews Sisters collaborator Bing Crosby sang “Shoo Shoo Baby” during an appearance on the Armed Forces Radio Services’ Jubilee program, a series of shows produced by Phil Moore for a target audience of Black soldiers. Attentive as usual to his audience, Crosby channeled his inner Louis Armstrong and delivered an unusually jazzy performance, most likely accompanied by Moore on piano.
“Shoo Shoo Baby” is an interesting early crossover song. While the Ella Mae Morse version was a hit on the R&B charts, Morse was white. So were all the earliest performers of the song. In the segregated music charts of the day, “Shoo Shoo Baby” scored first on the Black R&B chart as a prelude to its much larger breakthrough onto the majority-white Billboard pop charts—the world of the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra.
But when Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger introduced “Shoo Shoo Baby” into A Matter of Life and Death, they appear to have associated it with a Black audience.
The scene takes place during the Celestial Courtroom trial, where British Squadron Leader Peter Carter (David Niven) is pleading to be returned to earth on a technicality. Peter is represented by the British brain surgeon Frank Reeves (Roger Livesey) and the American prosecuting attorney is Abraham Farlan, who holds a grudge against the British as he was the first casualty of the American Revolution. The arguments of the lawyers reflect their stereotypical views of British and American cultures.
To illustrate the shallow nature of the British, Farlan plays coverage of a cricket match on a small handheld radio and sneeringly calls it, “The voice of England, 1945.” In comic response, the British soldiers perk up and attentively listen to the match.
In rebuttal, Dr. Reeves produces a large tabletop radio and dramatically switches it on, proclaiming, “The voice of America in 1945.” And “Shoo Shoo Baby” comes on. The point appears to be that American culture has reached a deplorable new depth. Farlan’s face registers complete incomprehension. Then there’s a cut to a group of Black American soldiers in the crowd—a deliberate association of the song with Black music and a Black audience. “I don’t understand a word,” admits Farlan. “Nor do I,” replies Reeves.
This is the closest I’ve seen Powell and Pressburger approach to full-blown racism in their films. In general, their track record with people of color is very good, especially by the standard of their time. Powell benefitted from a memorable performance by Black actor Rex Ingram as the genie (granted, he’s playing an exotic “other”) in The Thief of Bagdad (1940), where Powell also solidified the reputation of young Indian actor Sabu as a major star. In The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Blimp is shuttled in the sidecar of a motorcycle driven by a Black American sergeant. The sergeant appears to be well liked and respected by both his fellow soldiers and the nuns. There’s nothing demeaning in the presentation or the performance by Norris Smith. And prior to this scene, A Matter of Life and Death clearly depicts a heaven equally accessible to all races and ethnic types. Their hearts were in the right place.
For me, the “Shoo Shoo Baby” scene recalls any number of moments in the TV situation comedies of the 1950s and 60s where the adults are cluelessly bewildered by the new music—usually rock and roll in that period. Often, they would quote a nonsense phrase like “Be bop a lula” for an easy laugh to show how illiterate the new music was. And that’s exactly what Massey and Livesey are doing in A Matter of Life and Death, and it would be harmless if not for the pointed cutaway to the Black listeners in the stands. However… looking closer at the shot in question, there isn’t any actual mockery in the shot. The (deceased) African-American soldiers are being thoughtfully attentive to the trial. The officer in the left foreground appreciatively nods along to the music, almost imperceptibly. It’s obvious that he likes it. Rather than a critique of the song and R&B in general, this presentation could be reasonably interpreted as a criticism of the out-of-touch opposing lawyers who apparently share more in common than they originally assume. Maybe the culture of America is being shaped by Black America in a thoroughly good way. Or, as Bob Dylan sang 18 years later, “don’t criticize what you can’t understand.”
My guess is that the sympathies of Powell and Pressburger were initially with the two lawyers, but they backed off from the joke during the filming. It was never their style to demean anyone. They may have realized that if they carried the joke too far, their film might end on the wrong side of history.
As a side note, the performer of the little snatch of “Shoo Shoo Baby” played in A Matter of Life and Death has never been identified. While it’s clearly not Sinatra, it sounds like a Frank Sinatra imitation, with exaggerated comic background squeals from bobbysoxer fans in the background. If Powell and Pressburger had resisted the impulse to cut away for that one shot of the Black soldiers, the scene might have simply passed as a comic critique of the Sinatra phenomenon. But the shot is there, rendering the scene much more complex and problematic.
How Would You Like To Be Remembered?
Phil Moore took his early years of music education with pianist Edgar Eugene Coursen and in classes at the Cornish School and the University of Washington very seriously. He developed an enormous appreciation of the history and art of European classical music. Of course, he loved the jazz that people paid him to play at night, too, and he fully appreciated the career paths that jazz opened up for him. But he also wanted to be valued for his sensitivity to the European musical traditions. He hoped to demonstrate his full musical skill set at MGM, but the powers-that-be rarely allowed him to arrange the standard orchestral passages; Moore became typed as their specialty guy.
In his later years, Moore indulged in several opportunities to move beyond the jazz of the Phil Moore Four and experiment with contemporary art music. On his 1956 album Fantasy for Girl and Orchestra, Moore added some very ambitious orchestral pieces, like the title song, “Fugue for Barroom Piano,” and “Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra,” to his standard mix of jazz pieces. And in 1958, he departed even further from form with the long experimental compositions he wrote and conducted for Leda Annest on the Portrait of Leda album. These are challenging pieces and he probably never expected them to sell like “Shoo Shoo Baby”. But I wonder if Moore hoped that one day they would be rediscovered and serve as a foundation for reevaluating his contributions to the 20th century.
Maybe his art songs will receive that attention at some point, but in the meantime Moore’s established contributions are impressive enough: Breaking the color barrier by securing a full-time film crew position at a major Hollywood studio, composing the great pop song “Shoo Shoo Baby,” collaborating with John Hubley on the classic cartoon Rooty Toot Toot, and positioning stars like Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, and Marilyn Monroe for stardom.
That sounds like a full and good life to me.
Here’s a story that I particularly like from Phil Moore’s unpublished autobiography, as quoted in Ronda L. Sewald’s article “Things I Forgot to Tell You: The Forgotten Legacy of Phil Moore”:
Just hired at MGM, Moore was ready to get to work…
“Monday morning I was sitting around Rehearsal Hall A waiting for my assignment when I heard someone tap dancing in the next studio. I poked my head in there and saw a young guy tapping in front of the mirror all by himself. We said hi and started talking. Finally, he asked what I did. I informed rather proudly, as befitted a man of my position, that I was just starting as a rehearsal pianist.
“He said he was a song-and-dance man in Broadway shows, but they weren’t ready to cast him in a musical at that time. We both laughed about how funny studios thought. He was getting antsy. He was a really nice guy so, since I wasn’t doing anything, I asked him to come into my studio and we’d jam. I don’t know whether Gene Kelly remembers that, but we had a good time.”
Gene Kelly was just one of countless thousands who danced when Phil Moore was in the building. That’s a fine legacy for a musician, too—providing those ephemeral moments of joy when the music speaks to the soul and the body responds.
I’m sure Gene Kelly remembered.
Sources
Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood by Donald Bogle: One of the great books on Hollywood and the primary inspiration for these three pieces.
Phil Moore Collection, approximately 1918-1987, bulk 1953-1987. Indiana University Black Film Center/Archive. Finding Aid by Ronda L. Sewald. Sewald’s Biographical History is rich in detail. Oh, to dip into that archive!
“Things I Forgot to Tell You: The Forgotten Legacy of Phil Moore” by Ronda L. Sewald. Black Camera, Volume 9, Number 1, Fall 2017, pp. 329-349. Indiana University Press. Another essential piece by Ronda L. Sewald.
“Variety for the Servicemen: The ‘Jubilee’ Show and the Paradox of Racializing Radio during World War II” by Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff. American Quarterly, Dec. 2004, vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 967-968.
“Shoo-Shoo Baby.” The Powell & Pressburger Pages, www.powell-pressburger.org/ShooShooBaby.html
My guess is that the sympathies of Powell and Pressburger were initially with the two lawyers, but they backed off from the joke during the filming. It was never their style to demean anyone. They may have realized that if they carried the joke too far, their film might end on the wrong side of history.
Lee, this is yet another monumental installment in this unique labor of love project that has graced our site over the past weeks! Our mutual love for Powell and Pressburger and particularly for A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH brings me even closer to your vision here and I do agree that largely P & P are very far from any racist template, this one pared back infraction notwithstanding. You have me heading off to access “Shoo Shoo Baby” and always a treat to have the Andrews Sisters as part of any presentation. Your further amplification of the iconic Moore is a real joy!
Sam, it feels so good to be writing for Wonders in the Dark again! It’s been way too long.
I’d like to share a little about the genesis of this three-part series, especially since someone elsewhere wondered if I was using a time machine just to go on a racism hunt. And that wasn’t it at all! I was participating in a game on a private Facebook music page, and I asked for great songs (that I wouldn’t know) from 1930 through 1955. Someone posted the Andrews Sisters version of “Shoo Shoo Baby,” and I loved it so I naturally plunged into historic research on it—because I’m weird that way.
Two things caught my attention: First, it was featured in A Matter of Life and Death, an all-time top ten film for me. Second, it was written by Phil Moore… and I was in the middle of reading Donald Bogle’s Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams (awesome book!) and Bogle paid a lot of attention to this Moore guy. Soon I was in a web of so many of my favorite things: AMOLAD, and the Marx Brothers, and Dumbo, and Rooty Toot Toot, and Gene Kelly, Lena Horne, and Dorothy Dandridge, and even a rediscovered love for the Andrews Sisters. And so I had to write about it! So… no time machine and no racism hunt: It was a pure labor of love.