Sunday Music – Aba Daba Honeymoon

Today’s music video is Aba Daba Honeymoon, sung as a duet here by Debbie Reynolds and Carleton Carpenter, and this is taken from the musical movie Two Weeks With Love.

Link to Video at You Tube

This video was posted to You Tube by Darioj72

Isn’t she just so gorgeous.

As a young man, I came to appreciate music just a little prior to the beginning of my teenage years. That was in the the early 1960’s, and because of that, all my musical tastes were centred around the music of that era, just as the huge music phenomenon that came to be known as the British Invasion started. Coming from that era, I was also not all that impressed by the movie genre of Musicals. To me, the music from those musicals was from an era that was not really all that cool to someone who was just loving the direction modern music was taking.

Years later, I started to notice some of those old musicals, mainly shown on late night TV. Not that I really wanted to mention it to any of my friends, I started to actually enjoy some of those older musicals, just some of them mind you, because most of them I still thought of as pretty average.

Then, years later, thanks to my good lady wife, who always did like those older musicals, got me interested in even more of them, and gradually, I started to like more and more of them.

This song I have featured for today is from a Musical called Two Weeks With Love. The movie was made in 1950, and that is actually the year before I was born. I still haven’t seen the movie, and I doubt that I ever will get to see it, as I don’t think it’s available in DVD format that I might be able to hire from one of the video stores.

This song came to my notice because it was played recently on one of the local easy listening radio stations. The chorus was just so catchy, so I tracked the clip of this song down at the You Tube site.

While the song is quite catchy, what really took my interest was the gorgeous girl singing the song.

I knew about Debbie Reynolds and how big a star she was, with some of her movies from the mid and late 50’s and even into the 60’s.

This was the earliest images I had seen of her.

The musical movie Two Weeks With Love was made in mid 1950. Debbie actually turned 18 during the making of this movie. As you might expect, it then went off to have all that stuff done prior to its release. The movie was then released in November of 1950. By this time, Debbie was back at High School, and she graduated from High School a month later in December.

Prior to this movie, Debbie had made three movies, and in saying that, those roles were only minor, and very minor at that. She was still not at the stage where she got a credit on the movie poster. She was originally signed to Warner Bros at the age of only 16, incidentally, after winning a beauty contest, named as Miss Burbank in 1948. Warners did not renew her contract after small parts in two movies. MGM offered her a contract and she appeared, also in another minor role in her third movie, Three Little Words. This movie was another of those dancing vehicles for Fred Astaire, and Debbie Reynolds played a singer. The role was minor, but it was significant. Her singing voice was dubbed with the voice of Helen Kane, but the song she sang was one of the original boop boop ba doop songs, I Wanna Be Loved By You, which she sang as a duet with Carelton Carpenter.

This pair was reunited for their next movie, Two Weeks With Love, which was filmed hot on the heels of the earlier movie. Again, Debbie had a minor role as the younger of the two daughters, with the older daughter played by the movie’s name star Jane Powell, with her love interest being the second name star, Ricardo Montalban. Again, there was no mention of Debbie Reynolds on the movie’s advertising poster.

This time Debbie sang the songs she did have in the movie herself. What helped here as well, was that the song was released as a single, and it became a hit, in fact, a million selling hit.

While Debbie’s role was only minor in the movie, she actually ‘stole the show’.

And when you see the clip of this wonderful song, it’s painfully obvious just why she did steal the show.

She is absolutely gorgeous. She sings, she dances, and when you watch those wonderful facial expressions, you can see that she can act as well. I’m also willing to bet that she stole the show not for any of those wonderful talents, but that the popularity of the movie was because she was such a beautiful young woman.

Now, as to the song itself. While it was made very popular as a result of this movie, the song was written in 1914 by Arthur Fields and Walter Donovan. Originally performed by the duo Collins and Harlan, (Arthur Collins and Byron G Harlan) it was made into a sensational novelty hit by the lady known as The Princess Of Ragtime, Ruth Roye. At the time, the lyrics might have been considered a little risque. The 1950 movie with Debbie Reynolds is set at a time relatively close to when this song was a hit first time around, as the setting for the movie is indeed the early 1900’s.

As for Debbie Reynolds, with this movie, her time had come. Her second movie after this one, filmed in 1972 was the huge monster musical Singin’ In The Rain with Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor. Then came a series of hit movies, including the four Tammy movies.

Debbie had another million selling single with Tammy in 1957, a song which earned her a Gold Record. She can be considered as coming in at the start as one of the first of those excellent female actors who crossed over into popular singing careers, and she really did become an excellent actor, and in all, she made more than 60 movies. She also appeared in a number of made for TV only programs, and she was also versatile enough to play on the Stage as well.

Debbie is still alive today, and she still occasionally sings in public. She is such a wonderful actress and singer.

Tagged: Debbie Reynolds, Music, Music Video, Musicals

Posted in: Music, Videos