"Five Minutes of Fire": Johnnie Ray, South Pacific, Walter Winchell

<v Speaker 1>Hi everyone, It's Genie Alexander and you're listening to one
<v Speaker 1>of my favorite shows, the Surely You Can't Be.
<v Speaker 2>Serious Podcast, hosted by my good friends Dee and Jason.
<v Speaker 3>Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Surely you Can't
<v Speaker 3>Be Serious Podcast. Special Edition five Minutes of Fire. We're
<v Speaker 3>here talking about the lyrics of We Didn't Start the
<v Speaker 3>Fire by Billy Joel. We're covering only five minutes at
<v Speaker 3>a time, which is about to link the song, so
<v Speaker 3>it works out kind of nicely. So please join us
<v Speaker 3>as we dive into some new lyrics today.
<v Speaker 2>All right, guys, so here are the topics that we're
<v Speaker 2>going to be covering today.
<v Speaker 3>Johnny Ray, South Pacific.
<v Speaker 2>Walter Winchell, Johnny Ray, Jason.
<v Speaker 3>Tell me what you know about Johnny Ray?
<v Speaker 1>All right.
<v Speaker 2>Johnny Ray was a singer, songwriter, and pianist. Tony Bennett
<v Speaker 2>called him the father of rock and roll what At
<v Speaker 2>age thirteen, he lost his hearing in his left ear
<v Speaker 2>at a cub scout sting where he got whacked in
<v Speaker 2>the ear. He started singing professionally at age fifteen, so
<v Speaker 2>he started singing in clubs as a white singer, which
<v Speaker 2>kind of made a name for himself seeing these black Clubs,
<v Speaker 2>R and B Clubs.
<v Speaker 1>If your Suit and the Letter.
<v Speaker 2>Of good Bye, he coined several rock and roll moves
<v Speaker 2>like pulling your hair, falling on the floor and crying
<v Speaker 2>while seeing. From there, he landed some movie rolls. He
<v Speaker 2>landed a starring role in There's No Business Like Show
<v Speaker 2>Business with ethel Merman, which I also know from Landy
<v Speaker 2>Towns an Airplane, and Marilyn Monroe, which we're gonna be
<v Speaker 2>talking about in a future episode. He was arrested in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen fifty one and nineteen fifty nine for soliciting a
<v Speaker 2>male undercover vice cop, which in the fifties that was
<v Speaker 2>a big deal.
<v Speaker 1>Just walking in way get the sunken.
<v Speaker 2>Well, and then he eventually died of liver failure in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen ninety. You can see him in the Come On
<v Speaker 2>Eileen video by Dexy Midnight Runners from like vintage video
<v Speaker 2>of him landing at Heathrow. He's name checked and Billy
<v Speaker 2>Idols Don't Need a Gun video and he's actually in
<v Speaker 2>the video. He's mentioned in Van Morrison Sometimes We Cry
<v Speaker 2>and Jimmy Ray's Are You Jimmy Ray song from the nineties.
<v Speaker 2>He also appeared in Happy Days in the Love Boat,
<v Speaker 2>but his main contribution is he's known as the father
<v Speaker 2>of rock and roll.
<v Speaker 1>Fantastic.
<v Speaker 2>All right, de, what do you know about South Pacific?
<v Speaker 1>Okay?
<v Speaker 3>South Pacific was a musical that came out in nineteen
<v Speaker 3>forty nine, the year of Billy Joel's birth. It was
<v Speaker 3>the biggest success on Broadway since Rogers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma.
<v Speaker 3>This was also a Rogers and Hammerstein's musical. It was
<v Speaker 3>based on the book by James A. Mishner called The
<v Speaker 3>Tales of the South Pacific, and it ran for one
<v Speaker 3>nine hundred and twenty five shows before it was finally done.
<v Speaker 3>It has songs that I knew growing up.
<v Speaker 1>Listen.
<v Speaker 3>I listened to the South Pacific soundtrack. I couldn't tell
<v Speaker 3>you how many times you've got bally high you got.
<v Speaker 3>I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair.
<v Speaker 3>I'm going to wash that man right out of my hair.
<v Speaker 3>I'm going to wash that man right out of my hair.
<v Speaker 3>You've got some enchanted evening.
<v Speaker 1>And China tudy. You may see a stranger, you may
<v Speaker 1>see a strange across a rape at a rule.
<v Speaker 3>You've got there's nothing like a name, You've got Happy Talk,
<v Speaker 3>You've got Younger than Springtime, and You've got I'm in
<v Speaker 3>Love with a Wonderful Guy. All of them fantastic songs
<v Speaker 3>from A Fantastic Musical from nineteen forty nine. The original
<v Speaker 3>production won ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Score,
<v Speaker 3>Best Libretto, and it is the only musical to win
<v Speaker 3>Tony Awards in all four acting category. Jason, what can
<v Speaker 3>you tell me about Walter Winchell?
<v Speaker 2>Okay? Walter Winschell is one of the first journalists to
<v Speaker 2>make journalism to a form of entertainment. He originally started
<v Speaker 2>out as a vaudeville performer and then became a Broadway critic.
<v Speaker 2>He's known for digging up embarrassing stories on famous people. Now.
<v Speaker 2>Initially he had a whole bunch of contacts with the
<v Speaker 2>criminal mafia realm before Prohibition, but after he made so
<v Speaker 2>many contacts there, he got kind of nervous and then
<v Speaker 2>kind of aligned himself with g Men, Uncle Sam and
<v Speaker 2>Old Glory. He was also Jewish and one of the
<v Speaker 2>first American commentators to attack Hitler. During the fifties, he
<v Speaker 2>supported Joseph McCarthy's quest to identify communists in the entertainment industry,
<v Speaker 2>which we'll be talking about very soon. He's best known
<v Speaker 2>for unethically attempting to destroy the careers of his political
<v Speaker 2>and personal enemies. His life ends in sadness when his
<v Speaker 2>son commits suicide. He ends up dying in nineteen seventy
<v Speaker 2>two due to prostate cancer. One person came to his funeral,
<v Speaker 2>and that was his daughter Walda.
<v Speaker 1>That's terrible.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, guys, That does it for today's episode. Join us
<v Speaker 3>next time for five minutes of fire.