Colonel Bogey

TCM is airing The Bridge on the River Kwai tonight at 8:00 PM ET, followed by a documentary on the making of the movie at 11:00 PM. I haven't seen the documentary, but I can certainly imagine that it must have been a difficult undertaking out in the hot jungle of Sri Lanka.

One of the iconic parts of The Bridge on the River Kwai is the British soldiers whistling the "Colonel Bogey March". The song actually has lyrics, and director David Lean wanted to use them. But, the lyrics were considered too profane to use for general audiences: the first line is, "Hitler has only got one ball". Hence, the whistling. If you want to hear a sung version, you could do worse than the get a copy of Dark Blue World, which I recommended back in June 2008.