I'm Just Wild About Harry

Steyn On-line ^ | January 19, 2020 | Mark Steyn

[Twotone]

On the radio this past week, I mentioned Alan Jay Lerner, author of My Fair Lady, Camelot, Brigadoon, Gigi, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, etc. And about twenty minutes after I came off-air I remembered a conversation I had with him decades back. The Pope was on tour somewhere (my estimate from the time period would be eastern Canada): he'd landed at the airport to be greeted by a shy moppet bearing a garland of flowers, and he'd kissed her head. And Alan showed me the headline above the picture in the newspaper:

Thank Heaven for Little Girls

- a song of his from Gigi. And so we started discussing the fondness of sub-editors for using song titles as headlines - and he and I simultaneously pounced on that morning's big front-page pic, of the Princess of Wales with her newborn baby boy:

She's Just Wild About Harry!

That conversation was a long time ago, in Alan Lerner's London home just off the King's Road in Chelsea. Yet, as you can see at right, the editors still reach for that ancient song title. In fact, its usefulness to headline writers seems to have outlived the actual song. So, with Their Not Quite Royal Highnesses still consuming a truckload of column inches, I thought I'd put in a word for the semi-prince across the water's musical namesake.

[Twotone]

Fascinating. Steyn did remark on the complexity of Eubie’s instrumentations. :-)

[Alas Babylon!]

Michigan J. Frog agrees!