"Melancholy Baby" cliché

[panache45]

There’s a singer or piano player in a bar or cabaret or lounge or club, and a drunk yells out "Play (or sing) “Melancholy Baby.”

How did this get to be a cliché, and when was the first time it was used in a movie?

[Sigmagirl]

In A Star is Born (the Judy Garland version), Esther (Judy) is shown in her life as a tavern/cabaret singer, dealing with the various riffraff and carousers who make her life miserable. At just about every place she sings, some jerk yells out “Sing Melancholy Baby!”

As far as I know, that’s the origin.

[Chez_Guevara]

The imdb entry for William Frawley offers the following explanation:

In 1912, he was the first person to sing the classic, ‘My Melancholy Baby.’ He was appearing at the Mozart Cafe in Denver, Colorado. He happened to visit a pub on Curtis Street, where he knew the proprietor. Knowing Bill was looking for a new song for his act, the proprietor directed him to the pub’s back room, where George Norton and Ernie Burnett were in the process of composing ‘My Melancholy Baby.’ He introduced the song that very night at the Mozart Cafe. In the audience that night was writer Damon Runyan (sic), well-known for his drinking. After he introduced the song, Runyan (sic again), drunken and maudlin, called out ‘Get Frawley to sing ‘Melancholy Baby’!’ repeatedly throughout the rest of the evening. Bill sang many encores. The comedy staple of a drunk requesting ‘My Melancholy Baby’ actually has a basis in fact.

[jayjay]

Whoa…who knew Fred Mertz could sing?

[CalMeacham]

From that same site:

Possessed of a fine singing voice in his younger days, it was supposedly Frawley, not Al Jolson, who introduced the song “My Mammy” to vaudeville audiences.

Whoa, indeed.

[Sigmagirl]

Also re A Star is Born, it is supposedly Humphrey Bogart’s voice doing the drunken yelling.

[Serenata67]

My choir teacher loved Judy (she was a she… and married), and cried all the time when she watched A Star is Born. Long story short, we would yell to her all the time, “Sing Melancholy Baby!”

[Rilchiam]

[ramble] When I was 14, I was at a family cookout where someone brought a collie dog. I tried my best to set up a photo of a watermelon, the dog, and my infant cousin. But first the dog wouldn’t hold still, and then the baby wouldn’t.[/ramble]

[garygnu]

On their CD, “Live” the Dapper Dans (Disneyland’s Barbershop quartet) introduce “Mr. Sandman” by saying, “Here’s a beautiful ballad entitled, ‘She Had a Head Like a Cantaloupe and a Face like a Dog So I Called Her My Melancholy Baby.’”

(On the next track, “Just In Case You Change Your Mind” is introduced as, “I Call My Girlfriend ‘Hinges’ Because She’s Something To Adore.”)

[BigT]

@jayjay

Whoa…who knew Fred Mertz could sing?

Anybody who watched I Love Lucy. They went out of their way to give him the opportunity to sing. Fred often got to serve as the constrast between Lucy’s inability to be “in the show”

[BrotherCadfael]

Perhaps “Melancholy Baby” was that generation’s “Freebird”?

[jayjay]

@BigT

Anybody who watched I Love Lucy. They went out of their way to give him the opportunity to sing. Fred often got to serve as the constrast between Lucy’s inability to be “in the show”

Really? I don’t remember any of that. Of course, my I Love Lucy knowledge is spotty, only having casually seen the ubiquitous reruns in syndication.

[C.Montgomery_Burns]

@jayjay

Really? I don’t remember any of that. Of course, my I Love Lucy knowledge is spotty, only having casually seen the ubiquitous reruns in syndication.

Fred & Ethel were former vaudevillians. They sometimes sang and danced in Ricky’s club, once even taking over the show when Ricky was sick. Fred was in an act called “Mertz and Kurtz” before he teamed up with Ethel, and they were reunited to do a show at Ricky’s club, too.