Since childhood, I've had this weird song going through my head. It's not really a song as much as the fragment of a song. Sometimes I'll sing this out loud, trying to make a hip reference, but since nobody remembers the attribution (including myself!) the joke goes flat.
It's a three-note pattern: the same three notes that start out the "My Three Sons" theme song. The only lyric I remember is:
You dance divinely...
Where did I hear this song? I'm guessing cartoons. I found a reference on Google:
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Elmer’s Pet Rabbit (Jones, 1941)-Bugs dances with Fudd and addresses him saying, Katherine Hepburn-like, “You dance divinely, really you do.”
Bugs dances with Fudd and addresses him saying, Katherine Hepburn-like, “You dance divinely, really you do.”
This has everything a budding gay boy could want: bugs bunny in drag, and references to an aging female movie star. But this is reported to be a *spoken* line, and I strongly remember the melody being sung. So, I need to keep looking.
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An Ed Fisher cartoon in the New Yorker?
"You dance divinely. And, coming from a secular humanist, that's quite a compliment."
I doubt that I was reading The New Yorker in my pre-teen years.. I was a hip child, but not *that* hip.
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"You dance divinely!"
This one's not even funny. I hate Christans who incorrectly think they have a sense of humor, and this definitely includes C.S. Lewis. Read "The Screwtape Letters"... trust me, you won't even crack a smile in what is the longest unfunny religious screed.
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Thomas Hardy's poem "The Supplanter: A Tale"
Quatrain VII
"You dance divinely, stranger swain,
Such grace I've never known.
O longer stay! Breathe not adieu
And leave me here alone!
O longer stay: to her be true
Whose heart is all your own!"
Oh heck yeah. I'm sure this is where I learned the line. I read "Jude the Obscure" at age five.
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The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou, p. 453
"Hello. My dear, you dance divinely. Just divine."
Not Marlene Dietrich, I was wrong; she was Veronica Lake with substance, a young Tallulah Bankhead. "And you're so refreshingly young." Her perfume was thick, like the air in Catholic churches.
Obscure. But a great line. How can you not love a quote that mentions Marlene Dietrich, Veronica Lake, *and* Tallulah Bankhead?
Does anybody out there in LiveJournalLand have any ideas where I got this snippet in my head? It's driving me crazy.
