Then and Now

American Greatness ^ | 8 Apr 023 | Roger Kimball

[Rummyfan]

This is Easter, a holiday commemorating a miracle. That is good, because we are going to need one.

On Good Friday, I chanced across a photograph of the lower Manhattan skyline at night from Good Friday in April 1956. Three skyscrapers, dominating the space, feature certain windows illuminated to form gigantic crosses to commemorate that most solemn of Christian holidays. The year 1956 was not that long ago. But how much has changed in those 60-odd years! Can you imagine such a public display of Christian affirmation in New York today? Nor can I.

That was then. Now things are different.

I thought about that disjunction between then and now when reading through Washington’s Farewell Address this weekend. Washington had intended to withdraw from politics when his first term ended in 1792. He asked James Madison to draft a valedictory statement but, when the time came, bickering among some of his Cabinet, especially between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, convinced him to run again. He set the original document aside.

But when 1796 rolled around, he was weary and determined to leave politics. He enlisted Hamilton to revise the statement to which he added his own observations. The document is known as Washington’s “Farewell Address,” though Washington did not deliver it orally. Instead, he had it published in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser in September 1796, about 10 weeks before the election to choose his successor.

[Fiji Hill]

The vibrancy of the Christian faith in America during the 1950's was reflected in popular music. All of these tunes made it into the Top 20 nationally and most of them reached the Top 10.

• I Believe—Jane Froman (1953)

• The Man Upstairs—Kay Starr (1954)

• Whither Thou Goest--Les Paul & Mary Ford (1954)

• The Bible Tells Me So—Don Cornell (1955)

• He—The McGuire Sisters (1955)

• Gospel Boogie (A Wonderful Time Up There)—Pat Boone (1958)

[jjotto]

Or Stuart Hamblen’s ‘This Ole House’, published 1954.

[dadfly]

or Frankie Laine with the wonderful ‘My Friend’ on the same album with his hit recording of ‘I Believe.’ (I think his predated Froman’s recording, but everybody recorded ‘I believe.’

[Fiji Hill]

The bass voice accompanying Rosemary Clooney on her hit version of This Old House belongs to Thurl Ravenscroft, who is better known to Baby Boomers as the voice of Tony the Tiger in the cereal commercials. Ravenscroft spent the last years of his life in the same retirement home where my mother lived. He carried around a keychain that featured a little fuzzy tiger doll.

[jjotto]

Sensational voices by both. Great info!

A different time when celebs understood life…