"How to Murder Your Wife' and Other Fatal Attractions

Titling a film How to Murder Your Wife is probably not a maneuver that would succeed today, but in 1964 it was just fine as the name of a farce with Jack Lemmon as the prospective perpetrator and Virna Lisi as the intended victim.

Neal Hefti

Accompanying the action was an entirely characteristic but highly enjoyable, light-hearted score by Neal Hefti. This is the third such '60s score from his pen that has appeared here, following Sex and the Single Girl and Harlow. I'm posting it in response to a suggestion by longtime blog follower woolfnotes.

To fill out today's program, I've added nine "fatal attractions" - singles with "murder" (or in one case, "killing") in the title. Unlike Hefti's swingin' sixties motifs, these numbers from earlier decades cover the blues, jazz, Western swing, vocals and big bands - and even include another "murder" soundtrack theme.

How to Murder Your Wife

Lobby card

As you might expect, the How to Murder Your Wife proceedings were more innocent than the inflammatory title would indicate. The plot is more labyrinthine than I care to explain, but it involves Lemmon as an improbably rich cartoonist - with Terry-Thomas as a valet, no less - who ends up inadvertently married to the amazingly good-looking Lisi. The latter starts spending all his hard-drawn earnings and demanding constant sex, which wears Lemmon to a frazzle. He did have it tough, eh?

Terry-Thomas, Jack Lemmon, Virna Lisi

Anyway, his fantasies of getting rid of her make it into his cartoon strip "Bash Brannigan," which star characters that look suspiciously like Lemmon and Lisi. I believe it all works out in the end, although Hefti finishes his score with the dirge, "Requiem for a Bachelor."

Bash Brannigan's fiendish plot

This all reflects the Playboy ethos of the time, and is so dated as to be seeming to come from another world. But there are compensations: Lemmon is always good, Terry-Thomas is perfect, and Lemmon's lawyer is played by the wonderful Eddie Mayehoff, he of the pop eyes and massive underbite. Also, Lemmon's enormous bachelor pad is not in the least dated - it would be in perfect taste even today, almost 60 years later.

Jack Lemmon and Eddie Mayehoff

Hefti's music is well suited to this Richard Quine comedy. You will immediately recognize its resemblance to his other scores of the period, including pre-echoes of the theme to The Odd Couple - another Lemmon opus.

The Other 'Fatal Attractions'

As usual with such compilations, I'll present the constituent parts of the "other fatal attractions" in chronological order.

First we have "Murder in the Moonlight (It's Love in the First Degree)," a contrived title if ever I've heard one, courtesy of the unknown to me but impressively named Ray Nichols and His Four Towers Orchestra, with its nasal vocalist Billie Hibberd. Nichols started recording as far back as 1925; this waxing comes from his final session, in 1935.

Lil Armstrong

"It's Murder" comes from the pen, piano and vocal chords of Lil Hardin Armstrong, by this time (1936) a veteran recording artist, here with her Swing Orchestra. This is a enjoyable piece from Armstrong, soon to be divorced from husband Louis.

Speaking of good music, it doesn't get much better than "She's Killing Me" from Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, with a classic lineup including vocalist Tommy Duncan, fiddler Jesse Ashlock, trumpeter Everett Stover and pianist Al Stricklin, all of whom Wills name checks. The disc is a cover of a 1931 Nichols Brothers effort. Wills recorded his version the day after Hardin's session (September 28, 1936), also in Chicago.

Tommy Duncan and Bob Wills

We move over to London for a 1937 date by American clarinetist Danny Polo and His Swing Stars, a group selected from Ambrose and His Orchestra, where Polo was ensconced in the reed section. "Blue Murder" is a Dixieland-tinged instrumental, a style that Polo and Ambrose's high-toned musicians handle pretty well.

J.B. Marcum

"The Murder of J.B. Markham" is an unusual outing for songwriter-singer Johnny Mercer. This folk ballad was apparently inspired by a field recording captured by Alan Lomax earlier that same year (1937). That was based on the true story of crusading attorney J.B. Marcum, who had been assassinated on the steps of a Kentucky courthouse in 1903. Mercer's record is the only one of our 78s that concerns itself with a real, as opposed to a figurative or fictional murder. His reading is lively but inappropriately jaunty.

From 1941 we have a hard-swinging instrumental, "Murder at Peyton Hall," from the big band of Charlie Barnet. The leader's alto is featured throughout the riff tune, with Cliff Leeman's powerful drums also much in evidence. Neal Hefti later would do arrangements for Barnet (notably "Skyliner"), but this chart is by the bandleader himself. The title's significance, if any, is a mystery to me.

Charlie Barnet serenades his pet Herman

Frank Loesser and Jimmy McHugh wrote "'Murder,' He Says" as a specialty for the hyper-kinetic Betty Hutton to introduce in the 1943 film Happy-Go-Lucky. Introduce she did; record she did not, at least not until this 1951 version with Pete Rugolo. By that time, the hep lingo had dated, but Hutton's knock-'em-down performance had not. She is far more lively than such genteel vocalists as Dinah Shore, who recorded the song back in 1943. You really only get the full Hutton effect from a video, by the way.

Dimitri Tiomkin

A much different experience is provided by Dimitri Tiomkin's "Theme from Dial 'M' for Murder," the film where Ray Milland tries to murder Grace Kelly (go figure). This Coral single is all that was recorded of the score at the time (1955). It was backed by the composer's far more popular "Theme from The High and the Mighty," which benefited in the film from Muzzy Marcellino's iconic whistling. The hit versions of the latter tune were by Les Baxter and LeRoy Holmes; the composer's own recording (not included here) was a late entry.

St. Louis Jimmy Oden

To complete our "fatal attractions" we have "Murder in the First Degree" by the veteran blues musician St. Louis Jimmy Oden, who was actually from Nashville and worked in Chicago. On this circa 1956 Parrot release, Oden is backed by the band of drummer Red Saunders, who in those days was a busy musician in the Chicago studios.

The How to Murder You Wife LP is from my collection; the 78s are courtesy of Internet Archive with restoration by me. The sound on all the singles is very good, except for some surface noise on Lil Armstrong's record. How to Murder Your Wife had the slightly shrill sonics that afflicted many 60s recordings. I've tamed that tendency a bit.

Somebody Loves Me, Plus Seeley and Fields

The title Somebody Loves Me may lead you to think that this is the soundtrack for a Gershwin musical. Not so - it's from a 1952 film that starred the Betty Hutton in a story "suggested by the careers of Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields."

Who, I hear you asking, were Seeley and Fields? The duo were vaudeville headliners, famous in their day (1910s and 20s), but forgotten today.

I don't know why the Paramount folks thought fit to disinter the careers of Seeley and Fields, but they did for this production, which turned out to be Hutton's last musical on their lot. My guess is that they were following up on the late-career successes of Seeley's male counterpart, Al Jolson, and the box office business that The Jolson Story had done.

In some ways, it wasn't a bad idea. Sure, Hutton was far more glamorous than Seeley and did not sound like her, and the film itself isn't very good (I watched it in the line of duty). But the soundtrack (or "songs from the film" as this 10-inch record is dubbed) is excellent. It is certainly the best thing I have heard from Hutton. And Seeley and Fields were talented performers. So for this post, I have added 11 vintage 1911-1950 recordings by the two to go along with the soundtrack LP from Somebody Loves Me.

About Seeley and Fields

Let me back up and give you a clue as to the importance of Seeley and Fields. The star of this married duo was Seeley, who was a headliner well before she met Fields. She was raised in San Francisco, and by 1910 was prominent enough to introduce "Some of These Days," a song soon identified with her rival Sophie Tucker. A star of vaudeville, Seeley came out of the minstrel show tradition. Accordingly, many of her songs express her longing for the dear-old Southland (where she never lived) or indulged in distasteful minstrel-show stereotypes (e.g., Irving Berlin's Lazy). That said, she was quite a skilled and powerful performer who deserved her renown.

Benny Fields joined Seeley's act as a backup singer in 1921; they were married the following year and formed a duo. Fields himself was a talented vocalist whose easy-going manner and mellow baritone contrasted well with Seeley's trumpeting.

As far as I can tell, Seeley and Fields did not make records together until the 1950s, when Decca had them put together a rival set to the Somebody Loves Me soundtrack. But they did appear as a duo in a few short films, which can be seen on YouTube - "Hello Bluebird" from 1927 and "Why Don't You Practice What You Preach" from 1935.

The download includes seven Seeley solo recordings and four from Fields. More about those recordings in a bit; first, let's discuss the soundtrack LP.

Somebody Loves Me

I characterized Seeley's singing as "trumpeting" above; like Jolson, it might be more aptly described as "tromboning." Hutton, uncharacteristically, engages in none of that brassiness. While the liner notes acknowledge that she "sprang to quick fame with her knock-down-drag-out style of singing," it goes on to explain that in this film she reveals a new, quieter style. This was supposedly influenced by Seeley's change in styles as her career progressed.

The truth is that Hutton had recently encountered vocal problems and could no longer shout the house down as she once did. She turned instead to a more subdued style that is far more appealing, at least to this listener. As mentioned, she sounds nothing like the Seeley you will hear on her singles. In the film, her rendition of the wonderful "Rose Room" wouldn't have been heard past the second row of the theater.

The film's song repertoire is largely drawn from Seeley's trunk, but I suspect that "Somebody Loves Me" was chosen for its convenient title. Seeley did not introduce it and didn't record it when it was new (1924), as far as I can tell. To supplement the oldies, Paramount brought in the team of Livingston and Evans to supply a few new numbers. One was "Love Him," which was useful in the plot. Another was "Mr. Banjo Man," because the studio apparently thought there weren't enough stereotypical minstrel numbers in existence.

"Mr. Banjo Man" figures in the film's most elaborate number, where it leads into one of those "longing for the South" songs, "Dixie Dreams," done in blackface. This may be one of the last such scenes in a major American film; the only one more recent that I can recall is in Joan Crawford's Torch Song the following year. (The soundtrack LP from that film is available here.) Somebody Loves Me even had a lobby card with Hutton in blackface (included in the download).

The nine songs on the LP are all Hutton, except for a duet in "Jealous" with Pat Morgan, a Canadian singer who apparently dubbed the singing voice of Ralph Meeker for the film. Meeker is miscast; he was more comfortable playing Mickey Spillane than Benny Fields. But Morgan actually sounds like Fields, so that's a win.

The music director for the film and conductor for the LP was Emil Newman, brother to Alfred and Lionel. I've read that the album includes both material from the soundtrack and re-recordings. I am not certain about that, although I did notice that "Mr. Banjo Man" was redone at least in part for the LP.

1952 ad (click to enlarge)

Seeley and Fields Singles

Seeley first became popular in her native San Francisco. By 1911 she was in New York, and Columbia had engaged her to record "He's Coming Back." This appears to be her first record, according to discographer Brian Rust. The accompaniment is anonymous, but Rust speculates it is by Prince's Band.

Seeley's next release was not for another 10 years, the oddly titled "Funeral Blues (Eat Custard and You'll Never Break a Tooth)," again with an anonymous accompaniment.

She did a few more recordings in 1921 and 1922, but the next item in our set is from 1923 - the terrific if stereotypical "You Said Something When You Said 'Dixie.'" The arrangement is not a model of subtlety; it includes a banjo chorus of "Dixie" for good measure. But Seeley is superb.

She also is stellar in the next two selections, a coupling of "Lazy" with "Don't Mind the Rain" from 1924. For the first time, the band is named. It is the Georgians, an ODJB-style ensemble that is well suited to the singer's style. The group, a subset of the Phil Specht orchestra, was led by trumpeter Frank Guarente, with arrangements by pianist Arthur Schutt.

The Georgians (click to enlarge)

The final Seeley pairing is her first electrical recording: another Dixie song, "It's Just That Feeling for Home" and the famous "Yes Sir, That's My Baby," one of her biggest hits. Unfortunately, the Georgians have been replaced by the duo-piano accompaniment that was popular at the time.

Fields would seem to have made few recordings, but his coupling of two Johnny Mercer songs from 1936, "Lost" and "Welcome Stranger" give a very good impression of his genial manner and pleasing voice. I've also included an M-G-M record from 1950 coupling "For Me and My Gal" and "Lullaby of Broadway," but by then his voice had become dry.

The sound on all of these is very good, with the exception of Fields' 1936 disc, which has surface noise. All the Seeley-Fields materials were remastered from lossless files on Internet Archive, except for the 1911 disc, which is from the University of California-Santa Barbara. The soundtrack LP is from my collection. The download includes more photos, label scans, and so on.