Jeeves & Wooster - We All Wear A Green Carnation

[Ebrithil89]

does anyone else think that Jeeves looked pretty as a girl?

[PondPratchettShort]

"I say! It's about time someone invented something better than the foxtrot!" the best J&W moment ever! Mating newt dance anyone?

[ShutThatDoor]

I would say Coward wrote this song as a parody of the so-called Bright Young Things whose light shone between then Wars and promptly faded. The "willowy figures" and decadent values for the time would have made them stand apart from what was a very rigid society.

[o0SouthparkGirl0o]

I love the Drones in that series. They are so silly and the only thing they care about is having fun. XD Playing cricket in a closed room, hitting badminton balls into a lamp and all that stuff, running around in a circle, dancing. I know a lot of people my age (around 20 or older) who act similar when they are around each other and they end up being called "childish". Well in that case, I'd rather be childish and have fun xD Drones FTW!

[Aaron1912]

The person who sang this song in 1929 has just died. RIP Hugues Cuénod. He was 108 years old and was a leading singer in Noel Coward's Bitter Sweet when it was on Broadway in 1929.

[oneil317]

Anybody know where to find sheet music for this song??

[cheeseballhaggis]

@oneil317 No idea, but it's from the musical "Bittersweet."

[wyles54]

@oneil317

by Noel Coward

[rpatient]

@oneil317 I'm in a university light operatic society and we're doing the show this year. We got hold of the scores from the library. If it's any help, the edition we've got (not brilliant however) is published by Chappell & Co.

[nita2605]

<3 <3 <3 This combines so many of my loves, Noel Coward, Wodehouse and a great series with the magnificent Stephen Fry (and Laurie).

[1938gwen]

@nita2605 I agree absolutely.

[LinusandSally]

Only time I wish I was a man... So I could be part of The Drones Club.

[cheeseballhaggis]

It's at the end of "The Delayed Arrival," which is series 4, episode 4. Jeeves also dresses as a woman (and proceeds to flirt with D'arcy Cheesewright). It's classic!

[themusicdr]

thanks old boy

whats with the moniker

[themusicdr]

whihc was the episode where bertie dresses as fench maid - see 4.00

[Mullahgrrl]

A few decimetres to long of being french.

[themusicdr]

sorry i dont understand?

[Mullahgrrl]

While he is certaily dressed as a maid, I would dispute him being dressed as a french maid.

[themusicdr]

ahh! i see. well personally i wasnt aware of this, seeing as i dont have a maid (french or otherwise).

i see cheeseballhaggis has answered the ques as to which episde it was in

[Goethefemme]

In the book "Sunset at Blandings" there is a reference to a publication called something like "The Real Drones Club"

Anyone read it? I assume the author was a mamber. Personally, I prefer the Pellican Club. Large, stupid birds with big mouths...

[Boratlon]

P.G. wrote some short stories about the other Drones, although I can't remember the title off-hand.

[lureynol]

Eggs, Beans, & Crumpets.

[joeydog67]

This song is from Bitter Sweet a musical by Noel Coward. I just saw it in concert in SF with the Lamplighters. This number brought the house down!

[LiekaQueenofDarkness]

Ah, the Drones Club. What a marvelous place! Green carnations aside (although sometimes hard to ignore), I would love clubs at this time to have all been like this, you know, with various objects flying through the air, skillful ball skills and improvised sport combined with the ever-expanding buffet and drinks table in a strange sort of ballet of commotion and din! How perfectly splendid. Tinkerty-tonk!

[firth03]

1:38-1:44...what are they doing??

[cheeseballhaggis]

They are doing the male newt mating dance. They just saw Gussie show Bertie what a male newt does during mating season. Oofy and Barmy, being the intellectuals they are, decided that Gussie was showing Bertie a cool new dance.

[firth03]

ohhhhh...thats more than a little strange.

[Taskat]

Well, Gussie is the one that started it. It must be strange!

[1983herodotus]

@cheeseballhaggis

I say! It's about time someone came up with something better than the foxtrot!

This'll turn a few heads at Quag's, what?

[ianduckworth]

For those people who wish to research these things, green Chartreuse as a liquor is the major key to the minor key of Benedictine. (J K Huysman - A rebours,the book that Dorian Gray is reading in the Picture of Dorian Gray.) Happy drinking.

[Morahman7vnNo2]

So that's what they did in those English Gentlemen's Clubs. I wonder when they started to being in female entertainment.

[localfreak]

I wanted a green carnation to wear for my graduation, sadly it was not to be, but I can dream,eh? ;) 'Specially as what Wilde might call "that curious love of the green" gave me my dissertation subject

[57reg]

"That Curious Love of the Green" would be a splendid title for a dissertation. I gather yours was not a treatise the Irish civil war.

[Draculica]

OMG, I was always wondering what does the English gentleman in their clubs. ROFL ^^^^^

[GrenvilleT]

This is one of the greatest YouTube compilations: Noel's 'Bitter Sweet' song plus the wonderful creation of the Drones by the great TV Wodehouse adaptations.

I could see it over and over again.

But the mischief behind it is a suggestion that Bertie and the Drones were Wildean gays.

No, I'm afraid not.

They are 1930s ex-public school boys.

I teach at such a school here in the 'noughties' and know it's not necessarily gay.

Between you and me, it's idiocy.

But gays, keep dreaming.

[grai]

keep dreaming for what? Gorgeous men not to be straight? Gay men dont have to dream - there are more than enough gay men who are totally gorgeous Let's not assume straight men have a monopoly on attractiveness!

[cheeseballhaggis]

"But the mischief behind it is a suggestion that Bertie and the Drones were Wildean gays.

No, I'm afraid not."

Ah yes, but the humour lies therein. Of course (most of) the Drones weren't gay.

[uzukishikala]

Someone saying they "got a gay vibe" from Claude and Eustace is the understatement of the century. Eustace was *leering* at Jeeves the entire time they were in the apartment!

Oh, Drones boys. You're so cute the way you get engaged all the time.

One of my favorite things about the series is the Drones. They're... the type of friends I wish I had.

Excellent vid; thanks for sharing!

[bgudmundsson]

i got a gay vibe from bertie's twin cousins (also members of drones) in the first episode... they are sort of impish, fruity little truman capotes and one of them comments on how Jeeves is good-looking...just saying!

[emphillips88]

what is this song from?

[cheeseballhaggis]

It is from Neil Coward's operetta "Bitter Sweet"

[maniplefringe]

That would be Noël Coward, Sir Noël to you!

This is an utterly appalling visual sequence for this song! I have nothing against J and W, or toffs destroying dining rooms, but the song deserves better! It is about the social acceptability of outrageously camp, effete sodomites in 1890's society. So long as they didn't mention the vulgar 's' word of course... Try Antoine Blanche as a model of outdated homosexual behavious in 1929 (when the show premiered). Your drones through him in the river!

[cheeseballhaggis]

Sorry about the typo (I'll not point out yours... oops). If you'll direct your attention to the info near the upper right corner of your screen, you'll see that, though I didn't waste the amount of effort you did in creating the umlaut, I did spell the name correctly.

I apologize for failing to live up to your high standard of levels of "camp, effete sodomites." The issue here is that the Drones were not meant to be literally homosexual.

Settle down. It's a video on YouTube. Seriously.

[maniplefringe]

My comment is about taste, not spelling. Something you don't have very much of, you Heterosexual Haggis.

[rolandwj]

Whatever do you mean?

[PhilintheBlank1]

As if the normal Haggis wasn't an insult?

[Kakareen]

'Heterosexual Haggis'? Now, that is a corker! I shall have to remember that!

[CedricWolfbane]

A good video, a shame you cut of Jeevesis "most heartworming" though :)

[burnt62]

Lovely ... butch Oscar would have loved this I'm sure !!

[chumpchkin]

I....love....you....so goddamn much. I almost died of the squee. And then I just quivered for a while. The end! The END! So spectacular!

[wilmersdorff]

That is excatly what I ment, they are propably not gay - as you said - but if they are funny, they must be gay, because they live in the 30s??? I suppose heteros are not funny.. Discrimination??? well, my best friend is actually gay, so I'm the last to discriminate the homosexual. I just don't see the gay factor in drones. however...

[wilmersdorff]

There is perfectly nothing queer about the Drones. Why do the gays see themselfes everywhere men meet without women!!!

[cheeseballhaggis]

Actually, I am a heterosexual female, but it's nice to know that you discriminate against gay people. I know that the Drones are (probably) not gay, but that time period and those characters are quite humorous in my opinion. Sorry if it bothered you.

[SalazarHope]

Not bad

[madmax0r]

That was a lovely song choice for the vid! :D

[AlexRhian]

Love the Finknottle newt clip by "sensation" :D And the "morals" when pelting the policeman.

So cute. I love green carnations, and Wilde references, and Jeeves and Wooster, so quite a wonderful video!

[crazyaznnutter]

Was the Green Carnation thing a reference to Oscar Wilde?

God, i'm such as spaz.

Love the vid by the way :)

[WJPCIII]

Green carnations were a subtle 'signature' of homosexuals in late Victorian London. Wilde popularised the wearing of them. Noel Coward, though himself a homosexual, was actually lampooning rather than saluting the dandies of the 1890s with this number.