Hoagy Carmichael, 1899-1981

Hoagy Carmichael and Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not (1944)

Unfortunately, my DVR died, leaving me with a bunch of movies I'm not going to be able to get off of it, so while I'm waiting to fill up a new one, it's either DVDs or the two or three movies I've got already watched. And since I had to spend a bunch of time on the phone ordering a replacement, I don't really have time to do a real post. So instead, I decided to look up who's got a birthday today, not having done a birthday post in a while. That honor goes to Hoagy Carmichael, the pianist who brightened up a couple of movies in the 1940s and 1950s.

Among them is To Have and Have Not, which I mentioned above since I already had that still. I was looking for the scene in The Best Years of Our Lives where he plays "Chopsticks" with Harold Russell, but that scene doesn't seem to be on Youtube. Instead, a brief Youtube search revealed Carmichael playing for Jane Russell in The Las Vegas Story:



I had also forgotten that Carmichael is in Young Man With a Horn, although he's obviously not playing the horn....