I tried to find a nice graphic, like for Christmas, but everything I found was tacky. Then I thought, let’s look for something funny from Gary Larson.
Gary Larson’s comic, The Far Side, was, for many years, the funniest thing by far in the funny papers. Until he burned out and retired. (Larson didn’t do a strip, but a box with one image and one snatch of dialogue.)
Larson’s trick was often to take a figurative saying, and let it play out literally. My favorite cartoon of his shows a man standing on a roof, hammering in nails with the butt of his gun. A second man standing in the street below, looking to shoot it out with him, says, “I hear you’re handy with a gun.”
My favorite version of “I’m an Old Cowhand (from the Rio Grande)” was sung by none other than Johnny Mercer himself, who wrote the music and the lyrics, but I couldn’t find it at youtube. Mercer, who won four Oscars (out of 19 nominations) for Best Original Song, back when Oscar meant everything, usually stuck to writing lyrics for Hollywood’s greatest tunesmiths, e.g., Henry Mancini on “Moon River” for Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), and “The Days of Wine and Roses” for the eponymous picture the following year (also for "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe,” and “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening”).
1936 Hits Archive: “I’m an Old Cowhand (from the Rio Grande)” - Bing Crosby (Jimmy Dorsey orchestra)
6,267 views May 7, 2019
“Popular Bing record hit from his film Rhythm on the Range, which also produced the ballad ‘I Can’t Escape from You.’
“CD audio, originally issued on 78rpm: Decca 871 - ‘I’m An Old Cowhand (from the Rio Grande)’ (Mercer) by Bing Crosby, with Jimmy Dorsey & his Orchestra, recorded in Los Angeles July 17, 1936
“The 1936 Hits Archive - a collection of commercial recordings and songs that proved popular during the calendar year 1936 (some were recorded in 1935) via sales, sheet music, and radio exposure.…plus some others that have gained increased recognition or have been shown to have had an impact during the decades that followed.”
3 comments:
jerry pdx
A comic strip with a noose and depiction of hanging? Simply would not be allowed nowadays, some negro would complains that it triggers their "ancestral fear of lynching" that's somehow encoded into their dna. Maybe it was the eternal battle with censorship that helped cause Larson to burnout and he sensed where things were going with this extreme Wokism. Not that his work was political, while he occasionally threw something in there (usually leaning liberal) he was generally pretty apolitical.
How can the guy on the horse answer?He doesn't have a MOUTH!
--GRA
Having spent some time living in Wisconsin--where the ethnic Germans have subjected the population to endless polka music with accordions, my favorite Far Side had two panels. In one panel, there is picture of a man arriving in heaven. The angel hand hims a harp, saying, "Welcome to heaven--here's your harp." The following panel shows a man arriving in hell. The devil says, "Welcome to hell--here's your accordion." I once mentioned this when I happened to be in an accordion store in Seattle. The owner took me to the back where he showed me the framed original of that cartoon on the wall--he said Gary Larson gave it to him.
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