Happy Thanksgiving, neighbours! In honour of the occasion, here's a song about thankfulness- "Count Your Blessings (Instead Of Sheep)"- from the wonderful 1954 movie White Christmas. It was nominated for an Academy Award that year, but lost to the song "Three Coins In The Fountain", yet another occasion when the academy got it wrong. "Three Coins" is an okay song from kind of a dud movie of the same name, but it's not really comparable to "Count Your Blessings", and White Christmas is by far the better of the two films. Irving Berlin wrote the song based on advice given to him by his doctor on how to deal with stress-related insomnia. He wrote about his inspiration in a letter at the time: "I’m enclosing a lyric of a song I finished here and which I am going to publish immediately…You have always said that I commercial my emotions and many times you were wrong, but this particular song is based on what really happened. ... The story is in its verse, which I don’t think I’ll publish. As I say in the lyrics, sometime ago, after the worst kind of a sleepless night, my doctor came to see me and after a lot of self-pity, belly-aching and complaining about my insomnia, he looked at me and said “speaking of doing something about insomnia, did you ever try counting your blessings?” It's a great song with a timely- and timeless- message.
Comments
|
About MeI'm a lover of good books, classic movies, and well-written shows (as well as some pretty cheesy ones, to be completely honest). Categories
All
Archives
March 2024
Fun SitesOdds & Ends |