Eugene David
...The One-Minute Pundit

Friday, January 02, 2009




Here's another song that won't leave my mind, and it got planted there 44 years ago: As with too many kids my mom schlepped me to see two "family" films with animation in rapid succesion in 1964: Don Knotts in The Incredible Mr. Limpet (which I vaguely recall for being very vivid on screen) and Bill 'n' Joe's first feature, Hey There, it's Yogi Bear (which I don't). Judging from this astonishing press release in Boxoffice Columbia Pictures saw to it that every child in America trundled off to see it, parents in tow; HB's virtual parent Kellogg sold it, and there was a seven-inch LP promo disc you got for submitting box tops; there was even a "live interview" from "Jellystone Park"! (That's our Daws.) I must have nagged mom into buying the Colpix soundtrack, and much as HB's -- output is justly risible they came up with a truly decent score here, not by the usual Hoyt Curtin but by Marty Paich, and with songs* by two quite adequate tunesmiths named Gilbert and Goodwin (the former wrote the lyrics for "Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah"), and while all the tunes are truly good (why didn't somebody push "Like I Like You", a somewhat...suggestive ballad?), it was the close, "Whistle Your Way Back Home", that stuck in my head even more than the others, and only recently could I locate it and the whole thing on the Web, in a quirky but acceptable download (did any copies survive unscathed?). It just so happens the TWXSTERS recently issued the film on DVD after a long video absence, and a few pirated excerpts on YouTube confirmed my suspicions: it's full limited animation, if you get the gist. Nonetheless from the music alone for the first and last time in their post-MGM careers Bill 'n' Joe did something absolutely right.

*Neither Daws nor the other credited voices sang them. They had -- dubs?

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