Today I was reflecting on what is my favorite song, Stardust. Hoagy Carmichael wrote it one evening while a student at a college in Indiana in the 1920's. Originally it was a fast paced jazz song. Shortly though, it was discovered that if played at a slower tempo it had one of the loveliest melodies ever written. Hoagy also wrote Georgia on my Mind, which he recorded in 1930, with himself doing the singing, and a band of young men who would over the course of the next 15 years help invent and dominate the entire swing era, including Jack Teagarden, Jimmy Dorsey, and Pee Wee Russell. Also present were two alumni of the Paul Whiteman orchestra. Whiteman had over 200 charting hits in the 1920's, more hits than any artist ever. So from that legendary band came violinist Joe Venuti and the equally legendary Bix Beiderbecke. Bix and Hoagy were good friends, and it was Hoagy who insisted Bix come play.

One year later, at the age of only 28, hard living and hard drinking Bix would be dead, setting the stage followed decades later by the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.

Meanwhile, the same year Bix died both Georgia and Stardust became huge hits. Stardust though an instrumental originally had by this point acquired lyrics by Hoagy's pal Mitchell Parish, and the rest is history. Stardust would go on to become the most recorded song of the 20th century, recorded by Louis Armstrong, Artie Shaw, Nat King Cole, and covered twice by Frank Sinatra, and about a 1000 other times as well.

Frank Sinatra of course had his start in the big time playing with Harry James, in 1939. Big hearted James let Sinatra out of his contract so he could join the much larger and more famous Tommy Dorsey band. Tommy is the brother of Jimmy Dorsey, who was part of that fateful recording of Georgia on my Mind back in 1930. During his years with Tommy was when Frank first recorded Stardust, and it was also during this period of time that his ex bandleader Harry James met and married pin up legend and actress Betty Grable.

Grable was actually a divorcee, having been previously married to Jackie Coogan in the 1930's. Jackie was one of the biggest child stars of the entire silent film era, and had amassed a small fortune from his roles in the 1920's. His first big break came in a Charlie Chaplin short called 'A Day's Pleasure' and of course, as the titular character in Chaplin's first true masterpiece, 'The Kid'. It was while filming these movies that Chaplin was finishing up his contract with First National, having already founded along with DW Griffith, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks a new production studio aimed at benefiting the film makers and not the money men. This company was named for their intent, United Artists.

By the time Coogan became an adult, he discovered his vast earnings were gone, squandered by his parents. Lawsuits followed and as a result to this day there are laws in California designed to protect child actors, called The Coogan Act.

Jackie Coogan would become very bitter over all of this, and made his last big role starring in the 1960's television series 'The Addam's Family' as ugly Uncle Fester. He drove a car with a custom license plate, named for the movie that had first made him famous 'The Kid'. Only in his bitterness, he spelled Kid backwards.

Back in the past, Hoagy was becoming a well known character actor. In 1944 he co starred in 'To Have and Have Not', the movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. This was also the film where they met, and fell in love. Soon, Bogart and Bacall would be married.

In 1950 Hoagy Carmichael starred opposite Kirk Douglas in 'Young Man With A Horn'. The film also starred Humphrey Bogart's wife Lauren Bacall and the charming Doris Day. Hoagy played a version of himself, good natured pianist 'smoke'. Kirk played a trumpet player on a path to destruction, a role closely modelled on Bix Beiderbecke. As Kirk was not a trumpet player, his playing parts were dubbed by Harry James. Kirk was becoming a huge star, and had a series of hits in the 50's. He filmed 'The Vikings' in 1958 with Tony Curtis as his costar.

A writer named Ian Fleming begin penning a series of adventure books in the 1950's, about a spy named James Bond. You may have heard of him. When asked to describe him, he gave a number of famous British persons whom he felt personified Bond, but named only one American...Hoagy Carmichael. When film producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman sought to cast the role of Bond, they wanted an upcoming actor by the name of Roger Moore. Moore was also the personal choice of Ian Fleming. But Roger had contractual obligations, and so the part was given to Sean Connery. The Bond films were distributed by United Artists, the company cofounded by Chaplin.

When Connery departed the series in 1971, they finally managed to land their original choice, even though by doing so they were casting an older actor into the role, as Connery was born three years after Moore. Moore had throughout the 60's and early 70's been acting in series television...briefly in the American western 'Maverick', for most of the 60's in the swinging adventure classic 'The Saint', and in the early 70's in the cult classic 'The Persuaders', in which he starred opposite Tony Curtis.

As for playing Bond, Roger had no problem fitting in, and had since the 1940's been good friends with Miss Moneypenny actress, Lois Maxwell.

Hoagy Carmichael passed away on the 27th of December, 1981. My eleventh birthday. And four years to the day after Charlie Chaplin was laid to rest in Switzerland (Chaplin passed away two days earlier, Christmas). Like Chaplin, Hoagy had been born in the 1800's. But barely, 1899, ten years after Chaplin was born.

Chaplin was born on the 16th of April, 1889. 4 days later Adolf Hitler was born. Chaplin would make the classic Hitler parody 'The Great Dictator' in 1940, the same year Sinatra joined the Tommy Dorsey band. In the 30's, Hitler had banned Chaplin's movies in Germany, but secretly continued to screen them for himself.

Chaplin it should be noted, was born in the slums of London England where only a few months prior to his birth, five prostitutes were butchered and killed by Jack The Ripper.