Fall River Hoedown from New Faces of 1954
I have had tons of requests to post this clip from New Faces of 1954. I used it in my talk on Lizzie Borden in Popular Culture that I did at the Fall River Public Library on August 9th, 2006.
This is Micheal Brown’s “Fall River Hoedown,” also known as “Lizzie Borden,” also known as “You Can’t Chop Your Poppa Up in Massachusetts.” It premiered in the New Faces of 1952 review on Broadway, but this clip is from the film of that show, renamed New Faces of 1954.
Notice the casting of Lizzie and the movements and choreography of the chorus. High-larious!
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August 27, 2006 at 4:56 pm
It’s an oh-so-eerie world department: This revue featured BOTH Paul Lynde and Alice Ghostley, who of course went on to become regular costars on “Bewitched,” whose star, Elizabeth Montgomery, of course went on to portray Lizzie in the well-known made-for-TV movie (which first brought the case to my youthful attention).
ALSO, the composer of this hilarious (if truly tasteless) ditty was a dear friend of Harper Lee when she was a struggling writer in NYC. According to the recent biography “Mockingbird,” Brown and his wife gifted Lee with enough money one Christmas so she could devote an entire year to writing what became “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Thanks for sharing the clip– it’s priceless. Postscript– Anyone up to composing alternative lyrics to the title “It’s OJ to stab your wife to death in California”?