[Sheet music from the original Broadway show. Note implication that
“whoopee” just refers to a cowgirl’s yell: yeah, right.]
Over the weekend, a couple of TV experiences converged to drive this song into my head:
On Sunday, we watched the great Otto Preminger-directed film of 1959, Anatomy of a Murder. Jimmy Stewart plays a defense attorney for a confessed killer, an Army lieutenant played by Ben Gazzara. The killer was driven to it impulsively — so goes his defense — when he learned that his wife had been beaten and raped by the murder victim.
At one point, the lieutenant’s wife (Lee Remick) takes the stand in his defense. Although the prosecution has argued strenuously (albeit ineffectively) to keep the rape out of the testimony, they can’t help trying to turn it to their advantage. Lead prosecutor George C. Scott, practically leering, compliments the wife on her cute little dog (who’s just made a courtroom appearance), and then attempts to paint her as a tart who dresses and acts in a way almost guaranteed to lure men from the straight-and-narrow path of chivalry and honor. He calls attention to her beautiful hair, her tight clothes, her drinking, her playing pinball, her occasional disregard for even common everyday decencies like wearing underwear—
Jimmy Stewart leaps to his feet to object. Your Honor, he demands rhetorically, is the assistant Attorney General from Lansing pitching woo, or is he going to cross-examine?
The Missus and I snickered: pitching woo. Like, huh? woo???
But in fact the synaptic groundwork had already been laid in my head. Earlier, I’d watched an episode of the late SyFy show, Eureka. In this episode, the beautiful-but-tough-as-nails deputy sheriff, named Jo Lupo, suddenly starts behaving out of character. In particular, she reveals a sudden (and heretofore unrevealed) interest in the nerdy assistant-to-geniuses named Fargo. During a karaoke session in the local cafe, as Fargo plays the piano, Jo — in a slinky gown — goes into a rendition of “Makin’ Whoopee”… crawling around on the piano, and concluding with a kiss.
That scene in Eureka, red dress and all, was so close to another — Michelle Pfeiffer on the piano, Jeff Bridges at the keyboard, in The Fabulous Baker Boys — that it had to be intentional.
So I already had the song in my head. And then (as one does) I started to poke around on the Internets…
