Begin the Beguine
ChasProLTD
(From Chess: "How do you say? Begin the Beguine.") My actor playing Anatoly
asked me last night and the explanation I started to give along the lines of
"beginning the beginning of a new relationship" didn't seem exactly correct.
Does the phrase's roots go back further than the Cole Porter tune?
Thanks,
Chase
Blueskyfox
news:20040109075714...@mb-m18.aol.com...
The Beguine was a style of ballroom dance. It was also an order of nuns in
the middle ages. I don't think one is connected to the other, though.
Dan (the Man)
Noel Katz
Why a Soviet spends so much time quoting Cole Porter song titles remains a
greater mystery.
Steve Newport
noel...@aol.comedian (Noel Katz)
Maybe SILK STOCKINGS is a fave.
A Tsar Is Born
While cruising (on a boat, I mean) around the world with Moss Hart, Porter
observed a "native" dance called the beguine on some island or other, and
began to write his song. The ballroom dance called the beguine, however, was
invented after his return, when he put the song in the show, Jubilee, that
he and Hart were writing; it is sung by a nightclub chanteuse, who then
dances it. The rhythm Porter had chosen (which may or may not be the same as
the one he had observed) then became the formal, established "beguine"
rhythm.
Colloquial meanings implying the beginning of a new (necessarily brief)
romance derive from the song itself and do not pre-date it.
Jubilee is nearly 20 years earlier than Silk Stockings, of course.
(My favorite use of the phrase comes from Terrence McNally's The Ritz, when
Googie Gomez, the heavily accented Latina chanteuse, cries, "And now -- a
salute to
Cole Porter! 'When they biginn -- the biginn -- ". And, of course, if
Beatrice Lillie had married Leo Guinn and then divorced him to marry the Aga
Khan, and he died, she'd have been Bea Guinn the begum.)
Jean Coeur de Lapin
ChasProLTD
phrase can have the double meaning of beginning the political "dance" and the
new love.
Chase
>Subject: Re: Begin the Beguine
>From: "A Tsar Is Born"
Steve Newport
Atsarisb...@hotmail.com (A Tsar Is Born) Jubilee is nearly
20 years earlier than Silk Stockings, of course.
And earlier than Porter's partially Russian based "Leave It to Me" with
Sophie Tucker singing "We're Taking THE Steps to Russia."
-----------------------------------------
when Googie Gomez, the heavily accented Latina chanteuse, cries, "And
now -- a salute to Cole Porter! 'When they biginn -- the biginn -- ".
I also love from Googie-- "I was one of the fuckin' Trapp kids," "You
ain't no straight arrow, neither" and "Oklhoma?-- I can do that. I can
stretch."
buzz hauser
> the middle ages. I don't think one is connected to the other, though.
****
One never knows. Those nuns had to have Some fun on a Saturday night.
Buzz
****
Steve Newport
buzz_...@yahoo.com (buzz hauser)
<<<The Beguine was also an order of nuns>>>
---------------------------
Those nuns had to have Some fun on a Saturday night.
Did Debbie Reynolds do any Cole Porter tunes in THE SINGING NUN?