And There I Stood with My Piccolo

30

30. DURING OUR 40-41 SEASON BENEfits had become more and more frequent. Hardlya week went by without a special Red Cross broadcast or Bundles for Britain or Greek Relief or Russian Relief. And then one Sundaymorning,wham! we were at war, so everybodyimmediately began to worry about how he could best serve his country and we all bought black-out curtains and went to the firehouse to see a demonstration of how to put out a magnesium bomb with a stirrup pump. I looked at my stirrup pump just the other day and thought how quickly it became a completely useless, outdated war relic along with the blunderbuss and crossbows of other wars. Anyway, I thought probably the best thing I could do was to try to be an asset in mufti rather than a liability in uniform, and there certainly were bound to be a lot of bond drives on the radio and special songs to be written that somebody would have to write. So I decided not to join up, 196 and whadayaknow, the first thing I knew, I got a call from Washington, D.C., from the Office of Defense Transportation. The man said, "We need a song for the civilian truck drivers, something to show them how important their job is here at home. Tell 'em to watch their tires, don't be a soft-shoe slob, don't be a clutch jockey, don't be a road hog. Why, Mr. Willson, if you can get all those things into a song it'll be another 'Ol' Man River'!" Slightly dazed but with tremendous fervor, I started to work and knocked out a little dilly—but not exactly a second "OF Man River"—called "My Ten-Ton Baby and Me." Sent this off in the next morning air-mail with the music and three months later received a copy of the Truck Drivers' Journal, which reprinted the song somewhere in the back, and that's all that ever happened to that one. However, I'm not easily discouraged, and when This Is the Army made such a hit I was ready with a whole musical comedy for the Navy, complete with music, lyrics, book, and star (I had shown it to Walter Huston and he said, "Let's go"). I rushed down to Spring Street to see Captain Jack Bolton and Commander Adolph Zukor, who were very interested, and I could practically hear the overture and see the curtain rise on Act I, except that two days later they phoned to tell me that the 197 Navy had decided not to have any show at all. The mere fact that the Army had had a showwas sufficient to convince the Navy that it was a bad idea. But meanwhile Marco Wolfe, who is half of Fanchon and Marco, called and said he needed special material and songs for USO units that were going out all the time and did I have anything , and I said you bet and sat right down and wrote a thing called "Gangway, You Rats, Gangway ." I wrote eight or ten different sets of lyrics and went down to the Paramount and rushed backstage to play the song for Mr. Wolfe, and he thought it was just fine, and so did quite a lot of acts who were sitting around listening. I had a bunch of mimeographed copies, so I passed them out and we all sat around singing "Gangway, You Rats, Gangway," and then I went home just in time to get a call from a WAG captain who said they needed a song badly for the WAG. So I said I'm your boy and knocked out a thing called "Yankee Doodle Girl." Sent it off in the next mail and received word from WAG headquarters only a few days later, "Don't get any ideas about your WAG song becoming official. We already have a WAG song by a lieutenant of the corps, copy enclosed." Well, I was a little discouraged by this time, but just then the phone rang and it's Colonel 198 English of the Chemical Warfare Service asking for a song. Hot diggity! I met with Captain Art Parks to get some of the corps's background for the lyrics and he said, "First of all, mustard gas tears out the lining of the throat." "Good material for a song," I said...