SONG OF THE DAY
“You’ll Never Know” by Alice Faye (first performed in the film Hello, Frisco, Hello , 1943). Music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Mack Gordon, based on a poem written by a young Oklahoma war bride named Dorothy Fern Norris.
WHERE I HEARD IT
On HBO’s Big Love Season 5 (the final and most recent season), Episode 3.
INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)
– The song was introduced in the 1943 movie Hello, Frisco, Hello where it is sung by Alice Faye.
– It was also performed by Faye in the 1944 film Four Jills in a Jeep.
– The song is often credited as Faye’s signature song. However, Faye never made a recording of the ballad and, in later years, frequent covers of the song diminished her association with it.
– It was recorded in 1943 by, among others, Frank Sinatra and Dick Haymes. Haymes’ version was a number one hit for four weeks on the R&B charts that year.
Sinatra recorded his version at his first recording session at Columbia as a solo artist.
– The Sinatra and Haymes records were made during the 1942–1944 musicians’ strike, an American Federation of Musicians strike against the recording companies. As a result, the recordings were made without musicians, with vocal groups replacing the usual instrumental backup. The group backing Haymes, The Song Spinners, was actually given credit on the Haymes record. (The Song Spinners #1 hit, “Comin’ In on a Wing and a Prayer” held the #1 spot on the charts for three weeks preceding Haymes’ “You’ll Never Know.” Vocalist Margaret Johnson of The Song Spinners did the vocal arrangements for both songs.)
– In Britain, the recording by Vera Lynn was very popular due to the ongoing Second World War.
– The song won the 1943 Academy Award for Best Original Song, one of nine nominated songs that year.
– A 1952 recording by Rosemary Clooney with Harry James is also well known, as well as a version recorded in 1954 by Big Maybelle. Bette Midler performed the song for the Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook.
– The song was the first song that Barbra Streisand ever recorded in 1955. It was the opening song on her 4-CD box-set Just for the Record (1991). The box-set closed with another version of the song, sung as a duet by Streisand in 1991 and herself as a girl at age 13.
– Shirley Bassey reached #6 on the UK charts with her 1961 version.
– Alice Faye’s recording is the opening song in Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.
– The Mamas & the Papas vocalist Denny Doherty included the song on his 1974 solo album Waiting for a Song.
РVocalist Michael Bubl̩ performs a live recording of the song on his 2004 album, Come Fly With Me. [Gross.]
– Alice Faye (May 5, 1915 – May 9, 1998) was an American actress and singer, called by the New York Times “one of the few movie stars to walk away from stardom at the peak of her career.”
– She is remembered first for her stardom at 20th Century Fox and, later, as the radio comedy partner of her husband, bandleader-comedian Phil Harris.
– Faye’s entertainment career began in vaudeville as a chorus girl (she failed an audition for the Ziegfeld Follies when it was revealed she was too young), before she moved to Broadway and a featured role in the 1931 edition of George White’s Scandals.
– Meanwhile, she gained her first major film break in 1934, when Lilian Harvey abandoned the lead role in a film version of George White’s 1935 Scandals. Hired first to perform a musical number with Vallee, Faye ended up as the female lead. And she became a hit with film audiences of the 1930s, particularly when Fox production head Darryl F. Zanuck made her his protege. He softened Faye from a wisecracking show girl to a youthful, yet somewhat motherly figure such as she played in a few Shirley Temple films.
– Faye also received a physical makeover, from being something of a singing version of Jean Harlow to sporting a softer look with a more natural tone to her blonde hair and more mature makeup, including her notorious “pencil” eyebrows.
– Considered less than serious as an actress and more than serious as a singer, Faye nailed what many critics consider her best acting performance in 1937’s In Old Chicago. The film was also extremely memorable for its twenty-minute ending, a recreation of the Great Chicago Fire, a scene so dangerous that women, except for the main stars, were banned from the set.
– Fayewas also the female lead in 1938’s Alexander’s Ragtime Band. Although the film was mainly designed to showcase over twenty Irving Berlin songs, Faye again received strong reviews and the film was considered a landmark from changing the status of musicals as light, frivolous fare to a respectable film genre. One of the most expensive films for its time, it also became one of the most successful musicals of the 1930s.
– By 1939, Faye was named one of the top ten box office draws in Hollywood.
– In 1940, Faye played one of her most memorable roles, the title role in the musical biopic Lillian Russell. Faye always named this film as one of her personal favorites, but it was also her most challenging role. The tight corsets Faye wore for this picture caused Faye to collapse on the set several times and it shrunk her waist six inches.
– As Faye’s star continued to ascend during the war years, family life became more important to her, especially with the arrival of a second daughter, Phyllis. After her birth, Faye signed a new contract with Fox to make only one picture a year, with the option of a second one, in order to give Faye a chance to spend more time with her family. But Faye also used this as an opportunity to campaign for serious roles, turning down numerous scripts in the process.
– Faye finally accepted the lead role in Fallen Angel, whose title became only too telling, as circumstances turned out. Designed ostensibly as Faye’s vehicle, the film all but became her celluloid epitaph when Zanuck, trying to build his new protege Linda Darnell, ordered many Faye scenes cut and Darnell emphasized. When Faye saw a screening of the final product, she drove away from the Fox studio refusing to return, feeling she had been undercut deliberately by Zanuck. According to her obituary in the New York Times, “Ms. Faye handed the keys to her dressing room to the studio gate guard and drove off the lot.”
– In 1987 she told an interviewer, “When I stopped making pictures, it didn’t bother me because there were so many things I hadn’t done. I had never learned to run a house. I didn’t know how to cook. I didn’t know how to shop. So all these things filled all those gaps.”
– The late rapper Tupac Shakur’s mother, Afeni Shakur, whose birth name was Alice Faye Williams, was named after Faye.
– During her years as a musical superstar, Alice Faye managed to introduce twenty-three songs to the hit parade, more than any other female Hollywood movie star. During her peak years, she was often considered the female equivalent to Bing Crosby.
– Her voice, the New York Times wrote in her obituary, was “inviting.” Irving Berlin was once quoted as saying that he would choose Faye over any other singer to introduce his songs, and George Gershwin and Cole Porter called her the “best female singer in Hollywood in 1937.”