Eileen Farrell

            On Friday after midnight I lint rolled the top of my bed and no bedbugs turned up. I put some more carpet tape around the southeast corner of my mattress. I went to bed at around 1:40 and didn’t sleep very well although I didn’t feel any bedbugs. After yoga I checked and saw there were quite a few bedbugs caught on the tape and none wandering free. 

            I memorized the first verse of “Venez donc voir” (“Come Then See”) by Boris Vian. There’s only one more shorter verse to learn. 

            I worked out the chords for all but the final line of the first verse of “Les filles c'est un flipper” (Girls Are a Pinball Game) by Serge Gainsbourg. The last line of every verse is shorter than the others so it shouldn’t take long to work out. I think all the verses have the same chords and there’s no chorus. 

            I weighed 91.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it went out of tune most of the time. 

            I lint rolled the top of my bed and no bedbugs turned up. I put some two-sided carpet tape on the back and side of my desk. 

            I weighed 92.45 kilos before lunch, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since September 1. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 92.45 kilos at 17:50. I was caught up in my journal at 20:14. 

            I had a potato with gravy while watching season 4, episode 28 of The Garry Moore Show. 

            It begins with Garry reading next week’s newspaper. 

            Caroline Kennedy had a birthday party and her father gave her an erector set: US Steel. 

            There’s a bill before congress to simplify the 1962 income tax form. You send the government all your money and it gives you bus fare to work. 

            Elizabeth Taylor’s new movie will be Bathsheba. Her leading man has not been chosen and the studio is asking for volunteers. 

            NASA’s first female astronaut is undergoing flight tests. Scientists are not sure how she is reacting because every time they call the space capsule the line is busy. When the first Moon shot takes place Zsa Zsa Gabor will be a passenger because if there’s a man on the Moon she’ll find him. 

            Bob Williams performs with his trained dog Louie. The joke is that Louie the sad eyed spaniel does not perform but rather just sits there. I think it’s possible that he really would have to be trained to be that unresponsive. Williams does a lot of fast talking as he gives Louis his commands. He tells him to jump up onto a table and says, “He’s thinking about it!” He lifts Louie halfway onto the table and his legs are dangling with no effort to try to climb up. Bob puts him all the way on the table and says, “He loves to play!” Gary brings out his own dog Sam for Bob to train and he’s equally effective except that Garry’s dog actually wags his tail. 

            Garry plays newscaster Walter Crankcase and he takes us back to the most poignant moment in the history of romance. The year is 1657. The place, a modest cottage in one of the smaller European kingdoms. The event, the day the Prince found his Cinderella. Last night with the help of her fairy godmother, Cinderella was able to attend the Grand Ball at the palace. The prince is going to arrive soon as he is checking all the homes for the mysterious young woman he danced with at the ball. Walter interviews the stepmother and asks if she’d be happy if the Prince married one of her daughters. She says she’d be hilarious if he married both of them. 

            Cinderella arrives (played by Carol Burnett), hungover from the ball. Walter asks Cinderella if she lost a shoe last night. She says, “I wouldn’t be surprised!” He asks if she’d marry the Prince. She says, “Mister, to get out of this dump I’d marry a moose!” 

            The Prince’s footmen arrive and blow their trumpets to announce the Prince’s arrival and that aggravates Cinderella’s hangover to an extreme degree as she holds her head and doubles over the table. The Prince arrives played by Derward Kirby wearing a bobbed wig and tights. From the start he is straining to keep from laughing. He announces that he thinks his tights just ripped and the stepmother, her daughters, and Cinderella are cracking up. The Prince lowers his jacket from his shoulders to hide his behind. 

            The Prince looks at the daughters’ and the mother’s feet and can tell they won’t fit the shoe. Then he turns to Cinderella who is still laughing. She sits down as he kneels and she puts her leg over his knee to reveal her foot. He asks, “What size is this dainty little foot?” She giggles and answers, “Twelve”. He struggles to put the shoe on and she struggles to get her foot in until finally it fits. He asks her to marry him and she says, “Coax me!” He asks again twice and she repeats “coax me” twice until he’s about to get up to leave and she shouts, “Yes!” They are about to leave together and she says she wants to say goodbye to her family, then she sticks out her tongue at them and blows a raspberry. 

            Next is the segment called That Wonderful Year. Garry steps out under a streetlamp and says, “That wonderful year when jazz became the national rage; Edna Ferber, Ring Lardner, Sherwood Anderson, and Sinclair Lewis were the new young writers; 16 year old violin prodigy Yasha Heifitz made his debut at Carnegie Hall; the world’s most famous vamp was Theodosia Goodman, better known as Theda Barra; women mechanics replaced the doughboys on the homefront; ostrich feathers, narrow skirts, and parasols were standard equipment for vamping; the last of the old fashioned Revivalists, Billy Sunday drew crowds from coast to coast; at the movies everyone’s favourite two-gun man of the west was William S. Hart; and for laughs there was nothing like cops and slapstick; We see film footage of a traffic cop gradually being stripped to his underwear as his uniform is snagged by passing vehicles. It was the wonderful year of 1917. 

            Garry approaches an old man (played by Derward) who is whittling a small piece of wood on a bench and addresses him as Casper Penny. Garry asks if he’s been whittling long. Casper says, “When I started, this was a piano.” Garry informs Casper that he and Garry’s father Thomas Garrison Moore went to the same school. Casper says he remembers Tom well. Casper says, “He flunked Arithmetic, spelling, geography and… You’re his son?” “That’s right!” “Tom never could do anything right.” 

            Garry announces that two weeks ago their orchestra leader Irv Kostal earned an Oscar for his scoring on West Side Story. 

            Garry brings out Eileen Farrell (who played the stepmother), Bob Williams, Carol Burnett, and Derward Kirby. They sing Garry’s goodbye song, which is lyrically similar in theme to Carol’s later theme song: “We just said hello and right away we have to say so long for a while. Before we go we’d like to say you had a little laugh or a smile. We hope to see you soon (at this point Carol pulls her ear). Thanks for comin by. But just for now we’ll say goodbye.” Garry says, “Until next week, be very kind to each other and goodbye out there!” Garry’s dog is with them and barking for a treat which Garry throws for him. 

            Eileen Farrell began her career in 1940 as a member of the CBS Chorus on CBS radio. From 1941 to 1946 she had her own program called Eileen Farrell Sings. In 1947 she launched her career as a concert soprano and in 1956 began performing in operas starting with Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. In 1952 Toscanini hired her to sing on his recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In the movie Interrupted Melody she dubbed the singing of Eleanor Parker who was playing Marjorie Lawrence. In 1960 she released the first successful crossover album: I’ve Got a Right to Sing the Blues, which reached #15 in the charts. She starred at the Metropolitan opera from 1960 to 1966 starting with Gluck’s Alceste. In 1979 she did a duet with Frank Sinatra of the song “For the Good Times”. She was a voice professor at Indiana University School of Music. Her 1999 autobiography was called Can’t Help Singing.