Screenland (Nov 1944-Oct 1945)

by equipping myself for law practice." At this point there was a sharp interruption in my narrator's story. He snipped me on my right ear. But with all the aplomb of a schooled barber he laughed it off and I had soon forgotten the incident. He covered up the mishap very neatly, I thought, by again harping on the mischief that had been wrought by those thinning shears. He explained that because of this he was going to great lengths to do me a good job and had probably become a little tensed up. This is the main difference between barbering for money and barbering for pleasure, according to Hoagy. In barbering for the sheer love of it you sometimes become too conscientious and wound your client. I quickly lied to him and told him tliat I never have the barber shave my neck so he could dispense with this when he was through. "But tell me," I said, getting him back on his story, "wasn't your musical education actually accomplished along with your studies at Indiana University?" "Yes, indeed," he took up in his drawl, which is still typically Hoosier. "I got a thorough jazz education while I was in college. As a matter of fact — since we are talking about my new career as an actor — I also made my debut as an actor in my freshman year at college. I played the role of a monkey dressed in a suit of long dyed underwear, in the annual school revue. I hung on a pole for ten minutes in the middle of the stage, and when I slid down 1 spoke my one line of dialogue: 'Hello, papa, what time is it?' "But that was my one brief acting experience. I really concentrated on music. In 1919 various colored bands were coming to Bloomington to play for dances, and I met most of the leaders. I actually learned the interpolation of negro singers, which was to influence my composing later, however, by listening to phonograph records. Sock time, as I call it, was invented at this period and was originally with a banjo player and myself. We discovered it while playing at a lake resort during Summer vacation. Sock time, in case you don't know it, is a method of playing a piano that accentuates the down beat." It was during this same Summer that Hoagy made friends with a certain man from Chicago who was vacationing at the resort. This man persuaded him to come to Chicago to hear Louis Armstrong and Bix Biederbecke. Our hero not only heard, he was conquered — ^especially with Biederbecke's trumpet playing. So he promptly arranged to have both Biederbecke and Armstrong bring their bands to Indiana University to play for dances. At about this time Hoagy mastered the art of making strange noises with his mouth to imitate jazz, and to play his famous one-finger jazz which still will make any decent boogie-woogie deciple squeal with delight. This type of playing was invented as an imitation of Biederbecke's trumpet manipulations. Nor did Hoagy neglect to learn, how to warble like Louis Armstrong. "Not long after this," to quote Hoagy, "Bix and his Wolverine orchestra decided to record 'Riverboat Shuffle," and a publisher later brought it out. Still a little later Paul Whiteman got hold of my 'Washboard Blues' and did a concert recording of it." This is where Hoagy broke the ice singing on records. Since no one could ape his quaint style of vocalizing, Whiteman asked that the composer warble the lyric, and he did. But mind you, our hero was never once tempted to shift his course from law to music by way of making his living, even though one publisher asked him to become a staff' writer. He had come close to going all-out commercial in 19*23, though, when he stayed out of school to go to Palm Beach, Florida, to play for the society people. "The late Flo Ziegfeld was vacationing there at the time," explained Hoagy. "and he paid me fifty dollars to play for him for three hours. This kind of easy dough was enough to turn any college boy's head. And while in Palm Beach I also heard Irving Berlin play and sing. I decided I could do as well and this was the first serious incentive I had to start composing on a substantial basis." And although his numbers went over with jazz addicts. Hoagy was still inclined to the practical side, a bent which is still plenty evident in his nature. He chucked another offer to join the writing staff of a publisher following his graduation from law school in 1926, and went to Florida not to compose, but to wrestle with Blackstone before the bar of justice. "It took me two and a half years to make up my mind that maybe I had been mistaken about making a living out of the law," he went on, "and I started thinking back about Irving Berlin and Flo Ziegfeld. In 1929 I paid a visit to Indiana University, and it was while walking across the campus in a romantic mood one moonlit night that I came upon the tune of 'Stardust.' I just started whistling and it came out. After I had gotten it down on paper I decided to use some money I had made on a stock investment by going to Hollyw^ood to try to sell my song. I stayed six months, but none of the studios was interested. "Disappointed, but not exactly down. I took my song to the next best placeNew York. I got my friend Don Redman of the McKinney's Cotton Picker?, to record it. Isham Jones also recorded if later and it became a hit. After this T decided that it was music for me and forgot about law completely. I had several other tunes published and in 1936 — the year I got married, incidentally — Columbia Studios brought me to Hollywood to write for pictures. After winding up with Columbia, Paramount signed me. "And contrary to the belief that I actually made my acting debut in 'To Have And Have Not,' I did my first screen role in "Topper' at MGM, in 1938. I had written a song of the same title for the picture and when the man who was supposed to sing it didn't show up Norman McLeod, the director, persuaded me to sing and play it before the camera. And after a few more songs I decided to make California my home and bought a house for my family." Hoagy 's wife, the former artist's model. Ruth Meinardi, is indirectly responsible for his second lease on an acting career — for lease it is now that he has completed another film at RKO with George You'll iearn to I'LAV I'lMO IN ONE WEEK OR IT WON T COST YOU A PtNNY! YOU DON'T HAVE TO KNOW A SINGLE NOTE OF MUSIC Do you want to be tht center of attraction ... to sit at the piano and play popular songs? Now yuii can do it! You can surprise your family and friends — thrill yourself — by playing from actual sheet music! You'll be the life of the party — and how! The Simplex Piano Course — the simplest home piano course in the world — will teach you to play in one week! 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