A timeless Broadway melody... is not necessarily a description we’d apply to “Hammacher Schlemmer I Love You”. As detailed in these pages before, the parodic love ballad first composed for the 1929 comedy revue The Little Show has not as yet become a mainstay of the Great American Songbook. When seeking a recording for that earlier story, we had to settle for one made the better part of a hundred years later.
But this week we dug up a recording by one of the giants of the era, from a radio show hosted by a fellow giant. On the October 15, 1947 edition of Philco Radio Time, master of ceremonies Bing Crosby introduced a rendition of “Hammacher Schlemmer I Love You” by none other than Dinah Shore. Dinah was then at the peak of her career - her version of “Buttons and Bows” would be the #1 song of 1948 - and Bing, of course, was the most popular entertainer in the world. Color us flattered.
Ok, yes, it was during a comedy segment called “Your Flop Parade”, featuring justly forgotten Broadway bombs of decades past. Bing, Dinah, and the John Scott Trotter Orchestra give the full White Way treatment to such stinkers as “Yachting” and “It’s About Time That I Wrote To The Folks In Terre Haute”.
But how can we take offense when it sounds this lovely? Bing stumbles over the phrase “department store floorwalker” in the intro joke (something about said floorwalker “falling in love with his work and marrying the floor”). When the opening harp flourish swoops in, Dinah asks “How does it go?” But she croons our anthem like pure honey. Cast your ear to this and tell us we’re mistaken.
Let’s see, then... we sold a Nothing Box to John Lennon, hosted a shopping spree by the Queen Mother, appeared on David Letterman’s show, provided White House closets for two First Ladies, provided a key plot point in a Tom Hanks movie, and now had our praises sung by Dinah Shore. When you patronize Hammacher, you’re keeping good company.
Hi gang! Caption on the pic with both Bing and Di has a typo: change to “invincible” not invisible.