January 2011

Overrated The question is, Do you mean song specifically about war or just plain song that affected folks’ emotions during hostilities? Let’s tackle both.

The trouble with specific war songs is that they generally expire when peace comes. I mean, who sings “We Don’t Want the Bacon—What We Want Is a Piece of the Rhine” any more? That was a World War I hit. But even World War IFs smashes aren’t around today—for example, Frank Loesser’s rousing “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.”

No, the songs from the wars that we still cling to tend to be timeless ballads such as “Smiles” (1918) and “I Don’t Want to Walk Without You” (1941—with Loesser back on the evergreen track again). Of course the biggest war song of all is “White Christmas” (1942), which is actually set in Beverly Hills.

Overrated In modern military scholarship, the Sherman tank is notorious for being both undergunned and too lightly armored to face its German antagonists. The early models had a maximum of 75 millimeters of armor, later raised to 100, and a 75-millimeter gun; the German Panzer Mk IVs, however, had a maximum of 80 millimeters of armor, and the first Tigers had 100 (the Tiger II, 150) and mounted the famously excellent 88-millimeter gun.

Overrated I love Lucille Ball, but must I love “I Love Lucy”? Many did. When Eisenhower was inaugurated, in January of 1953, 29 million people watched; a day later Lucy gave birth to Little Ricky, and 44 million watched. That statistic genuinely frightened fifties mass-media critics, who had suspected that Americans would always turn out in bigger numbers to be entertained than to celebrate their collective democratic power. But could 44 million Americans have been wrong?

How good was “I Love Lucy”? It was never as sublime as its contemporary “The George Burns Show,” never as psychologically acute as “Leave It to Beaver,” never as funny as “Sergeant Bilko.” The real pleasure of the series wasn’t wit but something creepier, the audience’s understanding of a difference between what “Lucy” presented on the surface and what they presumed to be happening behind the scenes.

This was going to begin with a plea whose tenor, if not its specifics, is all-too-familiar. It is the tone—hopeful, worried—that tells of the threatened Romanesque railroad station, the superb cast-iron building that stands in the way of the office tower, the patch of battlefield that will offer future houses sumptuous views of the Shenandoah Valley. In this case, the imperiled item is the repository, as yet unfinished, of an American vernacular art as exuberant and significant as jazz.

At the beginning of his interview with J. E. Lighter in this issue, Hugh Rawson tells how, 30 years ago, the young lexicographer compiled a dictionary of the jargon slung about by the soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I. From this antique assemblage of archies and whiz-bangs and cooties grew a life’s calling: a comprehensive dictionary of American slang.

Overrated On September 9, 1956, Elvis Presley performed on “Toast of the Town,” a variety program hosted by Ed Sullivan. He opened with “Don’t Be Cruel,” then introduced the title song of his new movie, Love Me Tender . Later in the show Presley sang Little Richard’s hit “Reddy Teddy.” As he began to move and dance, the camera pulled in, so that the television audience saw him only from the waist up. The incident has become a legendary moment in the history of American culture, cited often as evidence of the dominance of sexual censors in the 1950s.

Overrated “A chicken in every pot; a car in every garage [1928].” This well-known slogan, widely attributed to Herbert Hoover, originates with Henry IV of France, who wished for (but wisely did not promise) a chicken in every pot. Why is it overrated? First, there’s the fact that Hoover never said it. Hoover, a politician not known for his sparkling personality, left slogan writing to his supporters. The slogan appeared in an ad paid for by “Republican Business Men, Inc.” that ran in the New York World under the headline A CHICKEN FOR EVERY POT. The Business Men were careful to adapt the crib for modern times by adding “and a car in every backyard, to boot.”

Then there is the fact that the phrase didn’t so much help Hoover as hurt him. In the 1932 election, the Democrats mocked Hoover’s “promise” for chickens and cars in the midst of lengthening bread lines, rising unemployment, and massive inflation, leading Hoover to vehemently deny ever having said it.

Overrated J. R. Eyerman’s 1952 photograph, which first appeared in Life magazine, shows people watching a 3-D movie in a New York theater and is known to millions—deservedly so. It neatly encapsulates how America became a place of crass, mindless conformity in the course of the 1950s.

Except, of course, that America didn’t. The 1950s live on as a stereotype thanks largely to images such as this. In fact, they were a period characterized by considerably more creativity, individualism, and outright rebellion than our own era. The booming postwar years saw bold new movements in art, literature, and, yes, even film, along with the beginning of the civil rights revolt, an unprecedented number of working women, outraged investigations of everything from the mob to television, and continuous, running critiques any time conformity reared its ugly head. Even prefabricated model suburbs such as Levittown were quickly remodeled by their residents into individualized homes, and 3-D movies went nowhere.

Overrated Woody Allen.

Underrated W. C. Fields.

Overrated There’s a joke I heard in the eighties that goes: Two musicians are being put to death but are given a last request. The warden asks the first musician what that might be. “Could I see Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest musical before I die?” The warden replies that this might be doable and turns to the second musician. “And what is your final request?” “Kill me first!”

Many musicians believe that Mr. Webber, who is considered the most successful musical composer of all time, has been guilty of cranking out overblown and sometimes derivative musical scores. Cats , which had the longest Broadway run in history, certainly has much to recommend it, but by being so enormously successful, it probably stands as a symbol for Mr. Webber’s excesses. In an informal survey I did, it came up the most often as the most overrated musical of all time.