Happy Birthday Keely Smith!

March 10, 2009




Keely Smith turned 77 yesterday! I love her music, but maybe even more I love her act. When she and Louis Prima did their stage act together, Keely was always completely poker faced. I've only been able to see one of their performances, in a Frank Sinatra retrospective on PBS, but I really wish somebody would find a bunch of archival footage from their shows and release it!

When I first became hooked on old movies, in 2000, I didn't have TCM yet and relied entirely on AMC for my classic film fix. Back then they actually played classic movies, and without commercial interruption. (I know, shocking!) One of the first classic films I ever saw was Hey Boy, Hey Girl starring Louis Prima and Keely Smith. For years now I've regretted that I didn't tape it at the time because I can't find it on DVD or VHS anywhere, and I'd love to see it again. It was very B-Movie-ish, but the song numbers were stellar, and I really loved the way Louis Prima and Keely Smith played off of each other. He was so wild and energetic, which played perfectly with her stiff mellow personality. I just love them! If you haven't heard the song "Banana Split for My Baby" yet, you should really seek it out. It's a really fun song, and since it's from the movie Hey Boy Hey Girl, it will give you a slight idea of how fun the movie was, too.

ps. Thank you so much to Princess Fire and Music of Fire and Music and Nicole at Classic Hollywood Nerd for awarding me the Premio Dardos award! You both have incredibly nifty blogs, and so it is quite an honor to have you pick me for the award. To read about the five blogs I passed the award to, you can click here.

5 comments:

Nicole Newcomb said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iYQehE1mOE

elena-lu said...

i remember amc back then! too back its changed

MT said...

Happy birthday to her!

Unknown said...

Nicole- thanks so much! I never thought to look on youtube! I just found this one, too - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8qiz0Sqvas although the dress changes are very strange...

elena-lu- boy has it! I'm so glad I ended up getting TCM because AMC just doesn't show older films anymore.

Mattson- ditto!

Keith said...

Hey Kate. Happy Birthday to Keely. I think she's fantastic. I love her music with Louis. It was always incredible. She was great in music and film. What an entertainer.