Tonight You Belong To Me

Subject: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: alanabit
Date: 08 May 07 - 07:19 AM

I was watching a TV documentary last night, which featured some epic footage of the suffering in the Pacific war from 1944-1945. Towards the end, the soundtrack used was an old pop song, of a girl group singing in harmony, "Tonight You Belong To Me". I believe the song must have come from an era slightly later, as it sounded vaguely like pre rock and roll pop music of the early fifties. However, the effect of this song, which told of a world many of those young men never lived to enjoy, or were too disturbed to enjoy, was profoundly moving. Somehow the contrast of a banal pop song to the shuddering footage was more powerful than any "sad and serious music" could ever have been. It left me with two questions for fellow Mudcatters. Firstly, who can tell me anything more about that recording? I know I had heard it many years before, without knowing anything about the artist.
The other question is, what examples can you tell me of strange connections of pictures and film, which moved you profoundly?

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 08 May 07 - 07:39 AM

I have the recording, Alan. It's by sisters Patience and Prudence McIntyre. It was a big hit in 1956. It was a number 1 hit by Gene Austin in 1927. No, I don't remember the Gene Austin version. The song was a bit controversial in squeaky clean 1956 over here because the girls were very young, and for all their innocence, it was a song about making love. I mean, when the Beatles hit this country, all that they wanted to do (supposedly) was to hold your hand.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: alanabit
Date: 08 May 07 - 07:49 AM

Thanks Jerry. My education has already been extended - that's Mudcat! It had been so long since I'd heard the song, that I had forgotten all about it. Seeing those pictures, with the song playing over that horrendous suffering, will fix it indelibly in my head from now on. I wonder who else has seen something, which had a similar effect?

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 08 May 07 - 08:07 AM

Hey, Alan:

There is a scene in the movie The Gospel According To St. Matthew, where a cripple comes up to Christ to be healed. In the background, they're playing Blind Willie Johnson's Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground. To me, it was the most powerful juxtaposition of music with a scene I've ever seen. The song has always given me chills when I listen to it, and it was even more chilling in that scene.

Another song that is indelibly marked in my mind is The Ten Commandments Of Love by the Moonglows, which plays in the background of a scene in The Bronx Tale. A motorcycle gang has made the bad mistake of deciding to trash a bar in the Bronx, where Mafia-type criminals are gamlbing in the back room. The leader of the criminals comes out into the bar and locks the gang in, and then the rest of the men in the back come busting through the door swing baseball bats. It is one of the most brutal scenes I've ever seen, and spills out into the street where they destroy the motorcycles and leave the motorcycle gang strew about on the sidewalk and gutter. And in the background, they're playing The Ten Commandments Of Love. Absolutely brill, as the Beatles would have said.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 08 May 07 - 09:05 AM

Hey, Alan:

You have a wonderful topic for a thread: Memorable Use Of a Song In A Movie. Why don't you start one?

Jerry

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: alanabit
Date: 08 May 07 - 09:09 AM

If this one does not develop along those lines, I may do just that Jerry.

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Peace
Date: 08 May 07 - 09:44 AM

Overview with general info on Wikipedia.

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Peace
Date: 08 May 07 - 09:53 AM

Another more specific history.

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 08 May 07 - 10:11 AM

"and for all their innocence, it was a song about making love..."

Not necessarily. It could have been a song about him being her date for one night. The prom, maybe.

I always thought it was rather icky. Now that I know more about envy and jealousy, I think it's ickier than ever. Patience and Prudence probably didn't even know they were being used.

Subject: Lyr/Chords Add: TONIGHT YOU BELONG TO ME (Rose/Lee
From: beardedbruce
Date: 08 May 07 - 10:15 AM

TONIGHT YOU BELONG TO ME
Words & Music by Billy Rose & Lee David, 1926
Recorded by Patience & Prudence, 1956 (#4)


A7 D                D7      G       Gm
I know (I know) you belong to somebody new

       D    D9         Em   A7   D    D9   Em    A7
But tonight    you belong    to me.


    D                      D7          G          Gm
Although (although) we're apart, you're part of my heart

       D    D9         Em   A7    D    G    D
And tonight      you belong    to me.


Bridge:

    G   G/F#       Em G/F#       G   G/F#         G/B   A7sus4
Way down   by the stream,    how sweet    it will seem

      D   DM7          Bm7 Bm7-5       E7      A7    A7+5
Once more    just to dream    in the moonlight...my honey,


   D                      D7       G          Gm
I know (I know) with the dawn that you will be gone,

       D    D9       Em    A7   D    G    D
But tonight    you belong    to me.


Bridge 2:

      G      G/F#    Em       G/B      G/F#
Way down (way down) along the stream,

      G         G/F#       G/B    A7sus4
How very very sweet it will seem,

    D    DM7         Bm       Bm7-5            
Once more    just to dream

       E7       A7             A7+5                  
In the silvery moonlight -- my honey


   D                     D7       G            Gm
I know (I know) with the dawn that you will be gone,

       D    D9       Em   A7    D         
But tonight    you belong    to me.

D      Gdim    A7 D
Just to little old me.



Sisters Patience (age 11) and Prudence (age 14) McIntyre were the daughters of the leader of the backup band. Personally, I always wondered what happened to them after their 2 or 3 hits. Anyway, their version of this song was the #34 song for all of 1956, as well as #428 among the top 5,000 songs of the rock era (1955-94). It was also recorded by Lawrence Welk & The Lennon Sisters (1956, #15) and by Karen Chandler & Jimmy Wakely (1956, #49).

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 May 07 - 11:41 AM

I got this song confused with "Tomorrow belongs to me" from "Cabaret," and the scene where the young Nazi sings it is, to me, one of the most horror-inducing I seen (since it's seen in hindsight).

Another one I dislike is the scene in the God-awful film "Apocalypse Now" that's set to Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries."

Somewhere I've seen a film with Kristalnacht scenes set to "This Land Is Your Land." Quite, quite powerful.

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Cool Beans
Date: 08 May 07 - 12:31 PM

And there's another thread for us to play with: Songs You Thought Were Real.
"Tomorrow Belongs to Me" isn't a real Nazi anthem but was written by Kander and Ebb for "Cabaret." Similarly, "Edelweiss" isn't an Austrian folk song but was written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for "The Sound of Music."

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Peace
Date: 08 May 07 - 12:32 PM

'"Apocalypse Now"'

I dislike the movie in total. Of course, I was never a fan of "The Heart of Darkness". "The horror; the horror." Both of them.

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 May 07 - 01:00 PM

"Apocalypse Now" is a pretty weird movie. It has the odd good scene in it, but it's hard to put up with the general weirdness of it all. I was a lot more impressed by Platoon. Brando reached a stage in his career where it seemed that all he had to do to be considered "brilliant" was to lurch in front of the camera...sneer...belch...and wallow there in total self-hatred, boredom, and disgust. That's not what I call an appealing acting technique! ;-) I think he must have been a very tortured man in a lot of psychological pain. He also got old more quickly than he might have. I get the feeling that he was terribly, terribly disillusioned with life. The Brando movie I still like best is probably "Viva Zapata". Those were the days when he was still a young lion.

Alanabit, you mention the suffering shown in 1944-45. Do you mean suffering upon the Japanese, the Americans, the occupied Chinese and other people in Japan's empire at the time...or all of them?

Sorry, at the moment my mind's gone blank on powerful scenes in movies connected with some piece of music.

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 08 May 07 - 03:29 PM

Alan, unfortunately there's a little hole in my encyclopedic knowledge of songs *G* and I'm not familiar with this one.
But two songs that really got my attention and enhanced a movie for me are Tex Ritter singing High Noon, and Ralph Stanley singing O Death in O Brother Where Art Thou.

And a really good dig at the Nazis is Springtime For Hitler in the Producers.

Seamus

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: alanabit
Date: 08 May 07 - 03:30 PM

I mean in particular the suffering of the young Americans and the Japanese civilians, but also of the Javanese, Philipinos, Malays and Chinese. In fact, it is difficult to conceive of anyone thinking back on that time without being overwhelmed by the sadness of it all.

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 08 May 07 - 03:36 PM

Alan, I think Clint Eastwood dealt with this subject very sensitively in Flags of Our Fathers.

Seamus

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: alanabit
Date: 08 May 07 - 04:30 PM

I am going to see that film. Eastwood is very fine director.

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 May 07 - 08:14 PM

"Flags of Our Fathers" is an excellent film. He has followed it up now with "Letters from Iwo Jima" which tells the same story, but from the Japanese side instead. By all acounts it is a masterpiece, considerably more emotionally powerful than "Flags of Our Fathers" was. American audiences, however, may be pretty much uninterested in a movie that focuses on the personal stories of Japanese soldiers...no matter how good it is. We'll see. It's hard to get American audiences interested in a movie where they cannot easily identify with the protagonists.

For example, the movie "Zulu" was a big success, because its heroes were a beleagered group of British soldiers fighting off a tidal wave of Black African warriors. Americans and white English-speaking people generally could easily empathize with that...no problem. When a prequel was late made..."Zulu Dawn"...in which the script cast the Zulus in a much more sympathetic light, showed the British leaders as arrogant bastards who had deliberately provoked an unnecessary war of aggression against the Zulus, because they figured they could win it with ease...and then showed the Zulus achieving a huge victory by wiping out the British force at Isandlawana........well, American and British audiences were confused by that. They couldn't figure out who the "good guys" were supposed to be! ;-) It made them feel uncomfortable. Accordingly, "Zulu Dawn" did not do well at the box office.

Now the truth about war is that most of the soldiers are innocent of wrongful intention, regardless of which side they are on, and a good movie ought to have the honesty to show that. It ought to have compassion for those who fell on both sides, and respect for all of them. It ought to rise above the primitive business of establishing "good guys" and "bad guys". "Zulu Dawn", in fact, erred in spending too much time trying to make us despise the arrogant British commander (played by Peter O'Toole)...I suppose just so that we would be happy to see the Zulus inflict a massacre on his troops. That was unnecessary. It had little to do with telling the story effectively.

I believe that Clint Eastwood has tried to avoid that kind of manipulative demonization of "the bad guy" with these two movies, and I applaud him for doing it. He is showing respect and understanding for all those who fought and died at Iwo Jima.

"Letters from Iwo Jima" has made a huge impression in Japan.

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 May 07 - 10:49 PM

I made a mistake some years back and watched "Porkchop Hill" (about the Korean War) and "Hamburger Hill" (about Vietnam) in succession. On the same evening.

Don't. Watch them, yes. But don't juxtapose them like that unless you really, really want to see what happens when politicians make military decisions.

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Barry T
Date: 08 May 07 - 11:42 PM

I, too, fondly remember the song 'Tonight You Belong To Me'... but my recollection is of the Lennon Sisters performing it when they first joined the Lawrence Welk Show. 'Fell in love four times that night!

My guess is that the TV performance was within a year of the McIntyre recording.

I also recall Steve Martin singing it in one of his movies... accompanying himself on the uke!

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Stephen L. Rich
Date: 09 May 07 - 12:21 AM

Contrasting music with image is one of the oldest techniques in film. It has been used to great effect over the years. While some have been simple and direct, others have been somewaht less so.
   
    One the direct side is the closing sequence for "Dr. Strangelove (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb)". Repeated images of mushroom clouds are shown while the credits roll and a rather syrupy arrangement of the WWII vintage song "We'll Meet Again" is played behind them.

    On the less direct side is the song "Do Not Forsake Me (Oh, My Darlin')" which is used as a running musical theme throughout the film "High Noon".

    As songwriters we use a similar technique which has much the same result. We create a flowing, beautiful melody and set dark and forbidding images in the lyrics. "Suicide is Painless", the theme to the film "M.A.S.H.", or "Harris and the Mare" by Stan Rogers come to mind as examples.

    Painters and sculptors use the idea by assigning titles to thier work which seem diametrically opposed to the images they have created.
In a coffeehouse called Escape Java Joint, which is here in Madison, WI, there was a painting which hung on one wall or another (they kept moving it) for nearly a year that was done in dark shades of blue in accrylic and oil paint. It was roughly two-and-a-half feet high and about a foot wide. The painting depicted a close-up of the face of a man cught in the middle of a primal scream. The title was "Inner Child". When contrasted with the title, the work was, at once, chilling and hilarious.

    It's all part of making art, in whatever medium one is best able to use. Sometimes, in order to make a point clear, or to stimulate thought or discussion of a given point, one is obliged to push the emotional button rather than the intellectual buttons in order maximize the impact.


Just a thought.

Stephen Lee

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Barry Finn
Date: 09 May 07 - 02:03 AM

Hi Alan
Can't say as I remember the song at all but as far as movies & songs one that sticks out in my mmind was Humphry Bogart (I think) in Treasure of the Serria Mardrea (again, I think). He lead a life as a bad ass & in the end he's hiding behind some rocks from a posse sing "Sinner Man". Sort of put a tight cap on the ending.

Barry

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 May 07 - 09:34 AM

I too thought of "Suicide Is Painless," which in the movie is sung during a lavish "going away" dinner for the "Painless Pole." Since it is followed by the implication of an evening of sexual frolics it's an interesting choice on several levels.

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 May 07 - 01:36 PM

Dennis Potter's TV dramas, especially Pennies from Heaven and the Singing Detective - and I'm talking about the originals here, not any big screen variants - stand out in this context, bringing to life the famous Noel Coward line in Private Lives "Extraordinary how potent cheap music is."

I think there is a way in which light, even trivial songs, can sometimes sneak in under our barriers of cynicism in a way that objectively better songs cannot do.
..............
Drifting slightly, I love the way that familiar songs can so often reveal new meanings when they are used as soundtracks to some seemingly irrelevant activity. For example the collages you often get at the end of coverage of some sporting event on TV. British TV that is - I don't know if it happens elsewhere.

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: alanabit
Date: 09 May 07 - 03:49 PM

Harold Pinter built a whole play around that idea. I think it is called "Old Times". If I recall it correctly, a man's wife and her old friend from college spend an evening reminiscing about songs from their youth. The man feels totally excluded and alienated, as he has no connection to the songs at all.

"I think there is a way in which light, even trivial songs, can sometimes sneak in under our barriers of cynicism in a way that objectively better songs cannot do."

That's a great sentence. It describes exactly why I was so surprised to find the title song of this thread so moving in the context, in which I heard it. At any other time, I might have reacted similarly to Leeneia.

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 May 07 - 06:34 PM

It isn't just in fictional drama that this kind of thing happens - consider how it is completely impossible to think of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" without visions of the Great War forcing themselves into our consciousness. The lighthearted throwaway song has taken on the colour of the terrible reality, and it helps bring that reality home to us nearly a century later.

And of course it happens to us in our own lives, songs that coincide with particular events or periods become linked to them, and when we hear them we are carried back. "Those were the days my friend..."

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 May 07 - 09:15 AM

...ten thousand dollars/At the drop of a hat/I'd give it all gladly if our live could be like that....

If you had any songs in your life I think that the memories they are tied to will be evoked when you hear them. Some will be trivial, and some non-existent. But the others will return full bore and take you back to other, not necessarily better, times.

For example, "Lili Marlene" will bring back to me memories not of WW2, but of standing on a drill floor with the rest of my National Guard unit, being sent on "up to two years Federal Active Duty." Why they played "Lili" I'll never know, but they did. I can't remember the other songs that were played -- marches, probably -- but the disjunction of playing something probably 95% of the guys never heard of as they prepared to go off to Vietnam was what struck me at the time and which I remember now.

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 May 07 - 12:59 PM

"Lili Marlene" is an interesting example of a song that crossed over from the "enemy" side and became a hit everywhere. It was THE favorite song of the German military forces in WWII.

Subject: RE: Tonight You Belong To Me
From: Stephen L. Rich
Date: 11 May 07 - 07:33 AM

"Remember the war against Franco,
That's the kind where each of us belong.
Though he may have won all the battles,
We had all the good songs."
-- Tom Leher--