VAULTS: Celebrating the music of Johnny Mercer

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By Gary Arnold

A serendipitous convergence will make the next week doubly gratifying for people who cherish notable American songwriters — and would be receptive to recalling their careers by watching fond but also discerning biographical features.

First and foremost, the distinguished posthumous subject: Johnny Mercer, who was born in Savannah, Ga., on Nov. 18, 1909, and died in Los Angeles on June 25, 1976, after failing to recover from a brain-tumor operation.

Turner Classic Movies will celebrate the Mercer centennial with a Wednesday evening series throughout November. Consisting of 25 vintage titles and incorporating about 130 songs, it commences with two showings of a deft and melodic 90-minute chronicle titled "Johnny Mercer: The Dream's on Me."

Shot by Clint Eastwood's production company, this documentary will share the first Turner bill with a trio of pictures enhanced by Mercer lyrics: "The Fleet's In," a patriotic caprice of 1942 that encouraged Betty Hutton to run irrepressibly amok as an adornment to the Jimmy Dorsey jazz band; "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," a joyously kinetic hit of 1954 that flattered its troupe of male dancers and choreographer Michael Kidd more than the folksy-hokey song score by Gene de Paul and Johnny Mercer; and "Blues in the Night," a 1941 homage to jazz musicians that reflected the sophisticated and stirring partnership of composer Harold Arlen with lyricist Mercer.

The entire programming day on Nov. 18 will be devoted to movies that utilized Mercer songs, many classic but some also transitory. The parade is cleverly contrived to climax with a quadruple-bill that revives the four pictures that contained Academy Award-winning Mercer numbers: "The Harvey Girls," "Here Comes the Groom," "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "Days of Wine and Roses." The respective winners, of course, were "The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe," with a tune by Harry Warren; "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening," which reunited Mercer with Hoagy Carmichael; and the back-to-back collaborations with Henry Mancini on "Moon River" and "Wine and Roses." A dozen other Mercer songs with various composers were in the Oscar finals over four decades.

Two days after the first telecasts of "The Dream's on Me" a happy fluke of timing will bring a documentary about the Sherman Brothers, "The Boys," to the Cinema Arts multiplex in Fairfax County. This account of the still active, though sometimes estranged and problematical, songwriting partnership of Robert and Richard Sherman, which peaked with their collaboration on the Walt Disney musical version of "Mary Poppins" in 1964, will no doubt find an enduring niche on the Disney Channel.

For the moment let me recommend it as a rousing entertainment and absorbing show business family chronicle. Though not originally a Disney house documentary, like the coincidental "Walt and El Grupo," it benefits lavishly from the studio archives, which permit the highlights to become a Disney musical counterpart to "That's Entertainment!"

Richard Sherman makes a brief appearance in "The Dream's on Me" to echo the professional praise for Johnny Mercer as a lyricist and popular singer. The editing sustains numerous juxtapositions that invite us to sample Mercer and his contemporaries performing his most familiar songs. Frequently, the filmmakers have reached back to television variety or talk shows over a period of 25 years. Time and again, their selections make you long for additional treasure from these bygone programs. Among other favors, "The Dream's on Me" preserves the Keely Smith-Louis Prima version of "That Old Black Magic."

Sometimes there's a brilliant leap into a new rendition; for example, Maude Maggart has a thrilling interlude on "Skylark." But it's even more heavenly lights out when Audra McDonald sings "I Had Myself a True Love" from the Arlen-Mercer musical "St. Louis Woman," accompanied on piano by composer John Williams.

Stephen Holden of the New York Times proves an estimable go-to commentator throughout the movie, beginning with the observation, "He spoke the language of ordinary Americans and then elevated it just enough to make it poetry." The blend of playful savvy and emotional susceptibility in Johnny Mercer himself is amply documented during his recollections. For example, this description of his start: "I was so crazy about songs, early on, that I knew them all. I knew verses, I knew second choruses, and I began to write [lyrics] at the tender age of 15." Or this observation from Mercer the old pro: "You're halfway home if you've got a phrase everybody knows. As a matter of fact, if it becomes well-known, it's RIPE to be a song."

SERIES: Johnny Mercer centennial tribute
WHERE: Turner Classic Movies cable channel
WHEN: Starting at 8 p.m. each Wednesday in November
WEB SITE: www.tcm.com