Ours is the age of Mr. Tweedly. (For those unfamiliar with that particular killjoy, just say, “Alexa: Play ‘Elderly Man River’ by Stan Freberg.”) Our self-appointed, self-important censors, and goodness knows there are a lot of them, seem to get about as much shut-eye as rust.
The Christmas season just past, some Tweedlys set their sights on a favorite song, one that my big band has performed for years at our annual jazz club holiday show: “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” As the gig approached, I didn’t seriously consider abandoning the song. But I wondered whether audiences would be offended by lyrics they had enjoyed in the past, lyrics that had now been declared inconsistent with the movements of the moment.
I came to the club prepared to point out that for all its comic seduction, the song was originally a husband-and-wife act. Composer and lyricist Frank Loesser had come up with the elaborate shtick to perform together with his wife, Lynn, at their yearly Hollywood holiday party. (Legend has it that for all the entertainment, the couple’s Tinseltown friends didn’t much like Lynn. They called her the evil of two Loessers.)
To the disappointment of Frank’s friends — for whom “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was a treat known only to a select few — Loesser eventually contributed the song to a film. The movie was 1949’s “Neptune’s Daughter,” starring (as the watery title suggests) swimming star Esther Williams.
The song is an elaborate put-on: The wolf wooing Williams is Ricardo Montalban, and he does so on a warm California summer evening with nary a snowflake in sight. After Williams and Montalban sing their choruses, the film skips across the hallway to another flirtation in progress, this one with the gender roles flipped: Betty Garrett tries to keep a skittish Red Skelton in her arms by warning him not to go out into the imaginary blizzard.
The song was never just about a guy pressuring a girl.
I was even ready, as something of a last resort, to make the point to anyone seriously concerned about the ethics of the song that it is in fact a sort of morality play. The forces helping the young woman resist the man on the make are traditional ones — family and community, propriety and reputation. She is able to enlist a sort of help from her neighbors by expressing a concern over what they “might think.” She is able to argue against the man’s advances by drawing a picture of her father “pacing the floor” while her brother waits at the door. Her mother will be worried, she says, her sister suspicious. And don’t forget the maiden aunt whose “mind is vicious.”
So, I wasn’t exactly surprised that, just before taking the stage, I was stopped by a small group of women who had been chatting at the back of the club. One of the ladies asked, with a slight edge of anxiety, “Are you going to play … you know?”
I did know. But before launching into any of my explanations and justifications, I offered a response that I hoped would suggest, in its simplicity, that no explanations or justifications were necessary: “Yes.” I braced for a chiding.
Instead, the nice ladies broke into smiles. They weren’t just pleased, they were relieved. And they weren’t the only ones: When I announced the song from the stage, the wave of relief was palpable.
This was not a crowd of defiant conservatives fighting the culture wars. If anything, as an audience made up mostly of Washingtonians, one could expect the majority to be anything but conservative. But whatever their politics, people are tired of everything being turned into a political battle. They’ve had enough of the Tweedlys trying to turn every simple pleasure into something shameful. They’re tired of being expected to renounce their old joys.
The Tweedlys have worn out their welcome. I suspect they’ll soon wear out their power to intimidate as well. Here’s to a Tweedly-free new year.
