By MJ Wells

 

We don’t seem to hear people whistling tunes so much today, not that our hearing’s defective, but probably because there aren’t so many new tunes to whistle.

Anna, in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King And I, was prone to ‘whistle a happy tune’ to lift her spirits which she had cause to on many occasions when at odds with the King of Siam’s very different ways.
In Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket strongly advocated the need for Pinocchio to ‘Give A Little Whistle’, and Henry Mancini with Johnny Mercer penned ‘Whistling in the Dark’, for Julie Andrews in Darlin’ Lili.
Then there’s ‘Whistle While You Work’, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Even the Duke himself, John Wayne, whistled the theme tune by Dimitri Tiomkin in The High and the Mighty (dubbed by Maurice ‘Muzzy’ Marcellino).

Whistling became popular in Westerns such as Gunfight At The O.K. Corral, (also by Tiomkin), particularly along with the vocals of Frankie Laine whose singing is in the form of a narrator. Ennio Morricone
took this up in his spaghetti Westerns
along with other sounds.

In the musical, Camelot, Arthur and Guinevere debate “What Do the Simple Folks Do?”
Alan Jay Lerner’s lyric reads:

ARTHUR:
“When they’re sorely pressed,
They whistle for a spell;
And whistling seems to brighten up their day.
And that’s what simple folk do;
So they say.”
GUINEVERE: “They whistle?”
ARTHUR: “So they say.”
Lerner had earlier observed the power of whistling in My Fair Lady, when even the witty, wise and erudite Professor Henry Higgins, under the spell of transformed flower-girl, Eliza Dolittle, confesses:
“I’ve grown accustomed to the tune
She whistles night and noon…
I’ve grown accustomed to her face.”

In Pygmalion, Act Five, where Eliza has sought refuge upstairs in Mrs Higgins’ home, George Bernard Shaw wrote: “Higgins throws back his head; stretches out his legs; and begins to whistle.”

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own