Aha! That's where it's from!

[vakkotaur]

I had seen and heard clips from time to time that had, as I remembered it, a musical number that included the bit of lyrics, "..in glorious Technicolor and stereophonic sound.."

I'd been wondering what that was from for some time. I had looked and used Google a few times. Tonight I finally managed to be persistent enough to get the right search keywords. I mis-remembered the lyrics. The line really goes, "...glorious Technicolor, breathtaking CinemaScope and Stereophonic Sound." It's a line from "Stereophonic Sound" by Cole Porter and the tune was in the 1957 Fred Astaire film Silk Stockings.

Once I knew that, I could look around a bit more. That didn't turn up the rest of the lyrics (I think I need to get a DVD or a sound track CD) but it did reveal this piece of information, which amuses me: 'Stereophonic Sound' from Silk Stockings, 1955. Although originally produced on the stage, where such things did not count, the film version was in glorious Metrocolor, breathtaking Panavision and Perspecta sound.

Comments

Sudden flashback...

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

Oy, I remember that now. I saw that movie once. (Not when it came out; I wouldn't have cared much about musicals when I was one...) They did some sort of cheesy effect on "Stereophonic Sound."

It was a cute bit of Cold War fluff, with one truly sad, pathetic bit: the "Ritz Roll and Rock" number. Porter and Astaire try to be hip, with all the success that your parents have when they try the same, or perhaps more at the point, all the success Joan Rivers has trying to look young. With a very few exceptions (e.g. the late Johnny Cash investing Tom Petty and Nine Inch Nails songs with authority and sheer bleak inevitability that the original artists could never give them), at some point you have to accept that times change.

Re: Sudden flashback...

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Yes, there was an effect on 'Stereophonic Sound' which is why I put those words in italics.

I had a boom-box style radio/cassette player that, sadly, ceased functioning some time ago. It had a couple things going for it. One, it was wasn't just AM/FM but had some shortwave coverage. Two, the control for mono or stereo wasn't a simple switch but a pot like the volume control, and the normal stereo setting was in the middle of the range. It could be turned to make the stereo separation greater than normal, which seemed a useful thing for the form factor of the device. I couldn't move the speakers farther apart, but they could be made to act like they were farther apart. Of course, using that feature with headphones proved interesting.