Season 1-01 - Its Only a Paper Moon

The sky. So it's Gary Likert Welcome to it's only a Paper Moon under a canvas sky. Otherwise known as the building a planetarium in your backyard podcast. I selected that song because it's everyone knows sitting in a planetarium. It's not real and yet, your mind can drift away you can be fooled by that illusion. So taking that to the extreme, this song kind of encapsulated that people used to go to county fairs and sit in large paper moons to give the illusion that they were floating in space among the stars. Even though you could see the stars right through the moon. And Canvas sky. Well, Canvas was a popular maybe it still is backdrop for photographers. You know it had the light blocking aspect, the reflective ability you could paint it, so it was popular for photographers as a backdrop, and muslin. They mentioned Muslim is a plain woven cotton. So you had trees made of cotton and the stars by cutting off the canvas with a paper moon hanging in the sky. The song itself was written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg with some help from Billy rose. ARLEN and Harburg are more famous for a song from Wizard of Oz. Little something called Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Perhaps you've heard Judy Garland sing that Billy rose must have added something he was more famous for being the husband of Fanny Brice, who was a American, median and singers. If you believe in me was the first title but it was changed to pay for a moon that originally came out and 32 in a flop Broadway production called the Great Magoo. It then appeared in another movie the year later. But it wasn't really considered a Jazz Pop standard until after World War Two it was revived by everybody. Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, met King Cole, most famously in my book, revived the song and it's now definitely a standard. So today, we celebrate or I do at least that song from 1933. Of course, it was a very popular 1973 film as well. We won't get into that. Anyway, it does conjure that atmosphere, that atmosphere of well, I know this is fake. And though it's phony, as people used to say things are phony, but if I suspend the lead, if I believe in the presenter, I can just almost think that I am actually looking at the real sky and just be taken away to wherever my dreams would take me. So welcome again to the podcast. I hope you enjoy it. You'll have very short episodes. Might be some surprises little way down the line. But again, I'm Gary Likert and welcome