Thank you to everyone who continues to explore my blog even though I have not been posting a lot lately.
It is very exciting — and satisfying — to check my stats and see the many different blog posts people have visited during the past week.
One blog post which gets a surprising (to me) amount of traffic is about the composer Harry Warren.
He wrote the music for the song in the player at the beginning of this blog post along with lyricist Arthur Freed.
You can click here if you are curious to learn more about Harry Warren by reading my extremely loooong blog post from eight years ago (which also includes recordings of several of his hit songs).
Mr. Warren and Mr. Freed wrote “This Heart Of Mine” for a 1944 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) musical called the ZIEGFELD FOLLIES which starred Fred Astaire.
I think I first heard it sung by Judy Garland, who recorded it the following year for Decca Records.
Arthur Freed also wrote the lyrics for a bunch of other hit songs — such as “Singing In The Rain,” “You Are My Lucky Star,” and “Make ‘Em Laugh.”
You can click here to check out his Wikipedia page if you are curious to learn more about him.
I haven’t read any biographies about him (yet) but according to Wikipedia, he lived a fascinating life.
He was born in South Carolina in 1894, and ended up attending a very prestigious prep school in New Hampshire — Phillips Exeter Academy. I am guessing he was probably one of very few Jewish students on campus — and according to Wikipedia, he became interested in writing poetry there.
After prep school Mr. Freed ended up in Chicago and performed with early versions of the Marx Brothers act (!!!) in vaudeville.
He also wrote special material for them, which led to co-writing enough successful songs that Hollywood beckoned…and he was hired to write songs for early MGM musicals.
After many years at MGM, Freed transitioned from songwriter to producer, working (as an uncredited associate producer ) on THE WIZARD OF OZ and then officially producing his first movie, BABES IN ARMS.
Both of these films, as you probably know, starred Judy Garland.
Mr. Freed went on to produce many more of Garland’s movies including LITTLE NELLIE KELLY, FOR ME AND MY GAL, THE CLOCK, and MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS — which is where she met her second husband, the director Vincente Minnelli, whom Freed had brought from New York City to work at MGM.
According to Wikipedia, Freed hired great talent and then gave them free rein to do their thing — whether it was choreography, costumes, set design, songwriting, direction, etc.
He also gave himself free rein to do some very odd and abusive things, such as exposing his penis to a young Shirley Temple when she came for a visit to discuss doing a movie at MGM — and making sexual advances towards her mother as well.
Temple wrote about this incident in her autobiography — and apparently Mr. Freed experienced no censure as a result of his horrible behavior…
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
This reminds me of the ongoing conversations about Michael Jackson’s artistic and personal legacies…
Does one discard and avoid the music/art/products made by someone who does horrible things to other beings?
One of Mr. Freed’s most famous movies is SINGING IN THE RAIN, which re-used a bunch of his early hit songs.
Do we stop delighting in the the extraordinary dancing and singing of this movie because the producer was at times a perverse, abusive creep?
Perhaps this is something each one of us must decide for herself/himself…
I apologize for veering into this intense psychological and ethical territory.
I thought this blog post would be more light-hearted — to match the mood of the song.
However, human life is many-layered… full of contradictions, fallibility and mistakes.
Thank you to the (sometimes very flawed) songwriters who have given us wonderful music to lift our spirits year after year after year.
Thank you to pianist/producer Doug Hammer for his tremendous collaborative gifts.
Thank you to graphic designer Stephen C. Fischer for his ongoing work on behalf of my music.
Thank you to the photographers at Pixabay and to Diane Yoder for her composite image of Arthur Freed.
And thank YOU for reading and listening to another one of my blog posts.
If you’d care to stream this song — and maybe even “like” it — on your favorite music streaming platform, you are welcome to click here.
And you are always welcome to visit my website — and sign up for my very sporadic and under-utilized emailing list — by clicking here.
amusicalifeonplanetearth 
Thank you and Doug for this beautiful song rendition. You pose hard questions about flawed and abusive personal behaviors, and how that effects the art they produce.
Deep sigh. I will continue to sing this song even though Arthur Freed (after I read more about him on ye olde internet) appears to have been a not-very-nice person a lot of the time. But we are all flawed in different ways; so it seems almost inevitable that we will end up watching/listening to/singing/buying art/music/products created by yucky people. Another deep sigh. Thank you, as always, for reading and listening and commenting, Brad!
Yes, it’s good to be self aware and humble. Most of us are flawed and have done bad things.
“Does one discard and avoid the music/art/products made by someone who does horrible things to other beings?’
Trouble is – we all do “horrible things to other beings”. All of us. (Although most of us are not on an industrial scale.)
Perhaps we need another lens. Or set of lenses.
Yes…
A beautiful song, Will. And many beautiful songs and movies.
There are many horrible people who have created gorgeous music, art, movies, poetry. I have lots of problems with T.S. Eliot, but I contributed a poem to an anthology in response to his The Waste Land. I think each of us has to choose. Do you never watch any of the many movies Harvey Weinstein produced? Or do we honor the actors in them?
It’w fascinating, isn’t it, that horrible people can create or help to bring beauty into the world… I have never looked at a list of the movies Mr. Weinstein produced — but I like what you write about continuing to honor the actors in them. I don’t know if it it applies at all, but the phrase about “not throwing the baby out with the bathwater” just spriung to my mind.
It is fascinating. I suppose it just shows how complicated humans are. Thomas Jefferson wrote about liberty while enslaving people. What complicated mental gymnastics some people must do! I suppose sometimes that old saying does apply. 😊
Yes, some of us are definitely doing some complicated mental gymnastics these days…
I think we have to look at the big picture, what’s most important, like beautiful music. There will always be creeps, but don’t let them pull you down, and pull you away from the music.
Yes, let’s not let the creeps pull us down — and if it turns out we ARE one of the creeps, then let us learn and practice the profound value of sincere, empathetic apology.
Hear, hear!
A lovely, upbeat song, and you performed it beautifully, Will. Mr. Freed is gone now, so he won’t be terrorizing 12 year olds anymore, (Hurrah for Shirley Temple and her mother for getting away from him) but the knowing what he did does tinge the song a bit for me, I have to admit.
I take a stronger stance with present day creeps who know better, however. I refuse to watch the likes of Bill Cosby, for instance. If he had owned up to his behavior it would be different, but aye, watching his show now would “give me the ick” as they say.
I love Michael Jackson’s talent, but that’s where the line gets drawn for me. Children. He ruined the lives of children. As a first grade teacher of dozens of years, it’s such a heartbreak to watch the physical and emotional problems of little ones who have been abused just trying to get through every minute of every day, and knowing the weight they will carry on into adulthood. I was so disappointed in the sanitized and feel good movie made of Jackson! A nuanced movie would have been a good starting point to explore child abuse, especially including the abuse he himself must have endured.
I like that you always try to look squarely at the truth in your posts. In the end, it can only make things better, even if the doing is difficult. I always smile when I see a post from you come on my list!
Carry on!
Julie
Thanks for your long and thoughtful comment, Julie! I have begun reading a new biography about Stephen Sondheim, whose music I love partly because he is willing to explore the multi-layered complexity of the human experience (how one can feel sorry AND grateful at the same time regarding one’s marriage, for example…) Let us carry on — and see if we can manage NOT to inflict the painful experiences/lessons we may have learned earlier in our lives on other beings (human and otherwise).
Wonderful song, Will. That is a very tough question. I think each person needs to do some soul-searching and decide where to draw the line after learning about an individual’s moral slippage. The list is incredibly long: Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson, General Petraeus, religious leaders, past and present presidents, and so on. Without judging too much, we just need to decide and move on.
Yes. Our presidents have certainly experienced a lot of “moral slippage” over the past decades and centuries. I hadn’t been thinking about them until I read your comment, but the “Epstein Files” probably contain even more examples of “moral slippage” which a wide swath of powerful people (mostly men) would like to disappear…
Absolutely! Those Epstein files are exposing a lot of them, and my guess is that more of them are going to be held accountable once this administration is gone. The UK is actively pursuing charges there.
Wow,
Love the grass heart pic & hopefully will revisit post soon ♥️😊
Thank you!!!!
You’re welcome.