Betty Garrett Rhumbas with Humphrey Bogart

Betty Garrett was at the height of her screen popularity in 1949, when she made this record for M-G-M's captive record company. That year, she appeared in the fine musicals On the Town and Take Me Out to the Ball Game, both with Frank Sinatra.

The attraction here is a novelty called "The Humphrey Bogart Rhumba," which is a catalogue song calling out many if not most of the then stars of Hollywood, including Garrett's husband Larry Parks and Betty herself. Strange that M-G-M chose Bogie to honor - he was a Warner Bros. contractee. Bogart does make an appearance on the record, by the way.

The South American influence was strong in music at the time, and Garrett had even introduced a song that parodied the whole craze three years earlier - "South America, Take It Away" in Harold Rome's show Call Me Mister. (The original cast LP is available on my other blog, Big 10-Inch Record, here.)

Garrett hawks cold cream

Through a good part of the song, Garrett affects a flat, sardonic tone reminiscent of Virginia O'Brien (another M-G-M player). Not in the least my favorite approach to any song, but I guess it works well enough here.

The flip side is "Johnny Get Your Girl," an advice-to-the-lovelorn song similar to the almost exactly contemporary tune "Don't Cry, Joe (Let Her Go, Let Her Go, Let Her Go)". The music here is by Vic Mizzy, whose greatest hits were the themes to Green Acres and The Addams Family. Mizzy's melodies tended to be simple to the point of childish - this one may remind you of "A Tisket, A Tasket". It's still an attractive recording - as was the competing version by Dean Martin.

The sound is quite good, as are the arrangements by Harold Mooney.