Herr Lehmann, Herr Lehmann, Pt. 2: Music and Lyrics -- plus we visit both the Himalayas and the Moon! -- Garbo

 

 

Oh gosh, where do I begin?

 

 In last week's post I said that I wanted Wikipedia to revive the disambiguation stuff it used to do, meaning they used to put up entries which made titles, names, and keywords less ambiguous. 

But, I said in my post, I'd taken this task upon myself in regards to a 1931 German-language early-jazz hit about a European spa town. 

 

Until now, I thought I was getting things sorted out. Turns out I was not.  I had the wrong video up, for one thing. I'd put up this one:

 

 

 

 

 

But I should have posted this video, which actually matches the post. 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you can see why I got a song called "Herr Lehmann" mixed up with a song called "Herr Lehmann, Herr Lehmann." Google Translate is the only way I can make any sense of the German title and lyrics. (The English word "lyrics," by the way, turns out to be "text" in German, just to make looking things up a bit harder.)

 

Also, songs from 1931 are not at the top of internet search results.  And even when one gets results, they are often incomplete or wrong. For example, here's a little collage of screen shots taken while wading through music sites. Lots of errors, like listing the bandleader as the composer and things like that.

 

 

So first thing, let's consider for a moment the song I mistook for the one I meant to post last week.

 

 

 

I think "Herr Lehmann hat die Lu gezwickt" must mean "Mr. Lehmann has pinched air," meaning he's in thin air because he's climbing a mountain?  I've grabbed onto this idea because of other songs by the two-man team of Austrian songwriters.

 

 

Exotic locales like "Sahara" and "Tirol" (Tyrol) show up in  in titles of songs written by Otto Stransky and Fritz Rotter. I think these were vaudeville-type songs, some for stage comedies. 

The cartoon images at the top of this post are for sheet music (English and German versions) for another comedic tune by Stransky and Rotter, about a German scientist in the Himalayas. The joke in there involves running together the German word "im" ("in the") and the name Mayer till it sounds like "Himalaya." I'll take "German Puns" for a hundred, please...not.

 

 

 

Otto Stransky had a short career, as he was killed in a 1932 car accident, but Fritz Rotter went on to have a long career as a screenwriter and film composer. This website has nice graphics and am organized layout of the film projects in which Fritz Rotter was involved. There's also good info on Wikipedia about his life and his career

 

 

Felix Rotter has lots of credits. I was most interested in two films to which he contributed. One is a boxing movie called "The Comebeack."  Famed German fighter Max Schmelling starred in the German-made version.

 

 

Universal Studios also made a verfsion of "The Comeback." (Note "Number 4: 'The Leather Pushers'" at the bottom of the poster.)

 

The other movie with Felix Rotter music which interests me was made by another Fritz -- last name Lang.  You've heard of him, probably mostly because of the highly-influential movies "Metropolis" and "M."

Fritz Rotter wrote music for Fritz Lang's film "Woman in the Moon." Note the poster's lipstick-tube scace-ship. 

 

Here's the launch sequence from "Woman in the Moon."

It's possible to watch the full version of "Woman in the Moon" on YouTube!

Now we turn to the song that this series of blog posts was originally supposed to be about.  While the writers of "Herr Lehman" were Austrian, the composer credited with the melody for "Herr Lehmann, Herr Lehmann" was Polish. This composer's name was Bronislaw Kaper, though Hollywood often spelled his first name "Bronislau."

 

If you know any jazz at all, you know this tune by the Polish musician.  Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and other great names have recorded it, but here's the best-known version of Bronislaw Kaper's theme for the film "Green Dolphin Street," in a 1960 recording by Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

Within Hollywood, Bronislaw Kaper's claim to fame is that he won an Academy Award for the 1953 musical "Lili," starring Leslie Caron.

 

Kaper also wrote theme music for a romantic film, "Invistation," starring Van Johnson and Dorothy McGuire. The film isn't particularly memorable, but the lovely theme has been recorded many times.

Well, so there's all that lovely Hollywood music, but we still have that cuckoo jazz song about Marienbad to contend with.  The evidence is jumbled, but it's likely Felix Rotter wrote the words for this "Herr Lehmann, Herr Lehmann," while Bronislaw Kaper wrote the music.  I can come back and correct this if the sheet music I mail-ordered or more internet fluff sways me in another direction. 

 

ADDED NOTE, JAN. 10:  Got the sheet music and yes on Rotter writing the lyrics and Kaper doing the music. I laboriously entered the German lyrics into Google Translate, and the comic lyrics say that Herr Lehmann is a fool, because his wife didn't go to Marienbad, that Bohemian paradise full of handsome men, to slim down and recover her health, as she claimed. The frau and someone named "Baby" Schneid just happened to arrive at the health spa at the same time! The last verse extends deepest sympathies for Lehmann, who must continue to pay for his wife's upkeep, plus a mock offer to lend Herr Lehmann money now and then as needed. Ooh, burn.

 

 

I tried hard to find either the English or the German lyrics online but they were not to be found. While I wait for Sheet Music Plus to send me the printed four-page arrangement for vocal and piano, I can speculate from just the wacky music and comic singing full of teasing questions that Mr. Lehmann's wife's reputation was sinking fast during her stay. After all, the resort town was full of spas and sin.

That speculation is shored up by another recording of the hit. This one is by the Julian Fuhs Dancew Orchestra, and it has an R-rated video collage. Pretty darn suggestive!

 

Let's finish Part 2 of this blog post series with another version of a much more innocent comic song. This is the one about Dr. Mayer hiking the Himalayas. We remember him from the cartoon on the sheet music image at the top of the post. On this record, we have a female vocalist, and she's good with the funny voice thing,

Next week:  We look at the cultural setting of "Herr Lehmann, Herr Lehmann"