"Bedknobs and Broomsticks" and "The Little Princess"

I have had two songs stuck in my head over the past few days: "Eglantine" and "Old Kent Road." Both of these songs come from movies that I watched a lot as a little girl: Bedknobs and Broomsticks and The Little Princess. I watched both of these movies relatively recently, which I guess explains why I am thinking about these songs. It's been fun to rewatch these films and remember the things that I loved about them as a child. I also made some new connections that I didn't realize before. For example, I didn't realize that the opening credits for Bedknobs and Broomsticks was inspired by the imagery from the Bayeux Tapestry!

The chorus of "Eglantine" from Bedknobs and Broomsticks has been stuck in my head ever since this weekend (although I should note that the version of this song that my family knows is much shorter, I think because our copy of the film was taped off of the TV):


I have also had the "Old Kent Road" song stuck in my head from The Little Princess. This song is played twice in the movie, one when Shirley Temple ("Sara") is living at a private school, and later when she performs the number in the hospital for wounded soldiers. My mom would always point out to me that Sara decided to perform for the soldiers and cheer them up, "even though she didn't feel like it." Perhaps I often said that I "didn't feel like [doing things]" as a young girl?

First scene:


Second scene:


These are the lyrics to "Knocked 'Em in the Old Kent Road":

Last week down our alley came a toff
Nice old geezer with a nasty cough
Sees my missus, takes his topper off
In a very gentlemanly way

"Wot cher!" all the neighbors cried
"Who yer gonna meet, Bill
Have yer bought the street, Bill"?
Laugh! I thought I should've died
Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road

Every evenin' at the stroke of five
Me and the missus takes a little drive
You'd say, "Wonderful they're still alive"
If you saw that little donkey go

When we starts the blessed donkey stops
He won't move, so out I quickly lops
Pals start whackin' him, when down he drops
Someone says he wasn't made to go

"Wot cher!" all the neighbors cried
"Who yer gonna meet, Bill
Have yer bought the street, Bill"?
Laugh! I thought I should've died
Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road

When I showed The Little Princess to J a few weeks ago, I also made an interesting connection with the Sara's dream sequence. Part of that dream involves a ballet number, in which the ballerinas come together in a circle and wave their arms (like flower petals). Then, a little ballerina (Shirley Temple) is "born" out of this "flower." You can see this segment at about 5:55 in the clip:



When I watched this sequence recently, I immediately thought of these "ballet classes" that I used to hold for my little sister C and two neighborhood girls. I was probably about eleven or twelve at the time. I didn't really know much about ballet (I had a year of lessons when I was probably seven or eight), but I checked out a whole bunch of books from the library and thought that I knew enough to be an instructor. I would have C and her friends come and practice a routine that I choreographed for "The Waltz of the Flowers" (from The Nutcracker). About thirty seconds into the song, there is a little harp flourish which I envisioned as a time for the dancers to create a similar type of circular "flower" (from which one of the dancers would emerge). At the time, though, I don't think that I realized that I had pulled inspiration from my choreography directly from The Little Princess. That movie was so engrained into my life that I didn't even realize I was referencing it.

A lot of the movies that I watched as a girl were either made in the early-to-mid 20th century. And, for that matter, a lot of the books that I read were from the 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries. I suppose my mom predisposed me to become an art historian without realizing it: by exposing me to older forms of language and visual culture, I grew to have an affinity for the past and nostalgia (even if it the nostalgia isn't for something I actually experienced).