 Ladies and gentlemen, the Railroad Hour. And here comes our summer show train with your host, Gordon MacRae. The Association of American Railroads, the same railroads that bring you most of the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the fuel you burn, and all the other things you use in your daily life, brings you the Railroad Summer Show starring Gordon MacRae with Lucille Norman, the sportsman, and the music of John Rarigan, his orchestra. And here is your host, Gordon MacRae. Ladies and gentlemen, tonight the Association of American Railroads pays tribute to one of America's four most popular songwriters, a gentleman whose music has been right up there in the hit class year in and year out since about 1928. Mr. Jimmy McHugh. We went crazy over a song that went like this. I found it out as an office boy in the Boston Opera House at $8 a week. He had studied music, and he was always hanging around after hours plunking at the piano. Why, even the opera stars used to kid him about it. With hours after going home time? Yeah, sure I do. Well, what on earth are you doing to Telesaida? I was just seeing what happened when you gave a little personality. Are you under the impression that you can improve on the masters? Well, I think I can bring them up to date. Jimmy, music like that is timeless. It never goes out of date. Yeah, sure, I know. But someday I'm going to write my own music, and it's going to be as smart and up to the minute as a girl with a real short shingle. Then write good music, Jimmy. Oh, I aim to. Good, and back in those days nobody sang it, because nobody knew about it. Well, from his job as office boy at the Boston Opera House, Jimmy McHugh went to work as a songplugger in a music publishing house in Boston. Once in a while he'd play his music for some of the other publishers. You don't like my tunes, huh? Well, don't get me wrong, kid. I like them. I think all your songs are great. I'm just saying that people wouldn't go for them. Oh, forget about songwriting. I don't think it's for you. Well, thanks for the advice anyhow. I wonder how that music publisher fell in 1930 when the reviews came out on a show called The International Review. And anyone could read that a great entertainer named Harry Richmond stepped out and made theatrical history with a little song by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh that went like this. Grab your coat and grab your hand on the doorstep. Just erect your feet to the sunny side of the street. Can't you hear a pitter-patter on the sunny side of the street? I used to walk with those blue sunnies on the sunny side of the street. Jimmy McHugh's first real break came at the Cotton Club in Harlem where he was finally hired as a composer. He wrote the music for the Cotton Club shows and it was raw working there that he and Dorothy Fields did their first Broadway show together. The memorable Blackbirds of 1928 and had their first great hit, I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby. That same season he and Dorothy Fields had three hit shows running on Broadway at the same time. After that, he was on his way up. From Broadway, Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh went to Hollywood where a young singer named Francis Langford in a song of theirs got together in a way the nation never forgot. He had arrived. Now he could relax and take it easy. I don't like to seem impatient or anything like that but we've been waiting for that song too long. The girl is here. We've got to have it. I know. This is a new girl. She doesn't speak the language very well. It's going to take time for her to learn a song. I know. We've been patient but our patience is exhausted. We've got to have that song. We've got to have it right away. Why haven't you started? I know. I mean, I don't know. This kid is great and it's cost us a lot of money to get her up here. I want a great song for her. You said you'd deliver a great song. I know. Can't you say anything but I know? Well, probably if I really concentrate on it. You know, it's hard to get an idea for a song. You can't turn inspiration on and off like a water tap. Well, Jimmy, the zero hour for inspiration has come. You'd better get inspired and back. Funny where inspiration finally strikes you. You can be anywhere. I want a shower. Taking a shower. I'll talk to you as soon as I get out. That was it. That was it, Jimmy. What was what? What are you talking about? It's just a song. You were singing in a shower. Sing it again. Well, I don't remember what I was singing in the shower. Was it any good? It was sensational. Well, how'd it go? We'd rent a toilet. Went something like this. It couldn't have gone like that. Even in the shower, my songs have melodies. I'm trying to think, remember. Get back in the shower. Maybe then it'll come back to you. OK. So Broadway met for the first time Miss Carmen Miranda and heard for the first time a song that went like this. Fist in the moonlight, in the grand and glorious, gay, notorious, South American way. The Latin stream of love is like a dream of love. The Latin stream of love is in their veins. Live by a Jew for you or fight a Jew for you or drive a mule for you across the plains. Come on and swing it, the South American way. The Latin stream of love is like a dream of love. The Latin stream of love is in their veins. Live by a Jew for you or fight a Jew for you or drive a mule for you across the plains. Come on and swing it, the South American way. God's coming down, she'll sing it, come on and swing it, For South American way. The wind is wonderful music, but first a message from the railroad. Most of the glorious summer weather still lies ahead and that means many of us are still drawing plans for gale of vacation. Perhaps you have already bought your railroad tickets to your own favorite resort so you are assured of a journey that will be swift, comfortable and safe. For safety is the first rule of railroad service and safety is an essential part of almost every other rule which the railroads are operated. To give you some idea of just how safe railroad travel is today, the record so far this year shows that you could expect to travel by train from one coast of our country to the other more than 400,000 times a distance of more than 1 billion, 300 million miles without running the risk of a fatal accident. This excellent and constantly improving record of safety on the railroads is not the result of the adoption of any particular device or devices. Instead it is the result of a long time program carried out on a broad front by railroads and by railroad men. It is due partly to improve plant and equipment. During the past 25 years the railroads have invested each year on the average more than 500 million dollars in improved facilities and virtually every dollar of that expenditure has worked not only to increase efficiency but also to enhance safety. But spending money on safety is only part of the story. The railroads have sought safety as well as efficiency in establishing and enforcing their operating rules. For efficiency and safety go forward together and railroads and railroad men working together have carried on a continuous program of safety education recognizing that the greatest of all safety devices is a safe man. No the railroad safety record didn't just happen. It is the result of decades of investment in safer facilities of study of safer methods of attention to safety education and enforcement of rules all to the end that American Railroad shall continue to be the safest of all forms of transportation. And now here is the second act of the railroad hours tribute to Jimmy McHugh and his music. Another song he wrote is Dorothy Beals. How he happened to be associated with him. Many of his stories concern his own amusing difficulties in getting started on the idea for a song. For instance there was the time he and the well-known lyric writer Harold Adamson were engaged to write the songs for a Frank Sinatra picture. Maybe you don't like the title Jimmy. No no I think the title is great Harold. I couldn't sleep a wink last night. It's a swell title for a song. I just can't find a tune to go with it. Well it'll come to you. Yeah but when? Studio's already screaming. I've got to the point where I can't sleep a wink any night worrying about it. Well don't worry about it. Go to bed. Forget about it. It'll come to you. The minutes strain pass during the dark of night and when you're tossing feverously praying for inspiration the minutes are hot nasty little fellas who stick their tongues out as they go slowly past. You toss, you turn, you flop the pillow over, you flop it back. You get up have a cigarette. You go back to bed and you listen to that infernal clock and you say the words over and over. I couldn't sleep a wink last night. I couldn't sleep a wink last. I'm nuts. If I could only get some sleep. I couldn't sleep a wink last night. Was that something? Or wasn't it? Is the tune coming? Is Dame inspiration finally stirring? I couldn't sleep a wink last night. I couldn't sleep a wink last. Hey, that's it. That's it. Hey, where's the pencil? Where's the pencil? Some paper? Pencil? Here it is. Now then paper. Oh, no paper. Okay, I'll write it on the sheet. I got to get this down before I forget it. Now what was that tune? So Jimmy McHugh wrote the whole melody down on the bed sheet. And then he pulled the sheet over his tired body and went to sleep. The next day he rushed jubilantly to the studio to do the song. And he found he couldn't remember it. So he telephoned his home. Now look, take the sheet off my bed, get in the cab and come straight out to the studio with it. Yeah, the bed sheet. No, no, no, not the clean one. You did what? Oh, no, you didn't. Harold, she sent the sheet to the laundry. Oh, no, what laundry? Yeah. Okay, I'll get right over there so long. Come on, Harold, we got to run. You got to find that sheet. Go through some more laundry bags, go through the plant, go through everything. Hey, you're looking for a sheet with music? That's it. Okay, Mr. Keep your shirt on. Here it is. And there it was written in beautiful black pencil on a beautiful white sheet. Music by Jimmy McHugh words by Harold Adamson. And I'm sure you all remember that it went like this. Well, Jimmy McHugh is a ratio algae aren't all right. The kind of story that Americans love to hear and even repeat to the youngsters. So they can say, you too might help write the songs of a nation. Once there was a kid who started out as an office boy for the Boston Opera, eight weeks, eight bucks a week. And now the whole country sings and dances to his music. Oh, yes, it's a wonderful story. The story of Jimmy McHugh. Because it says if you've really got it, there's nothing that can keep you down. You've really got a song to sing. Keep singing it. One of these days, everybody else will be singing it with you. You know, we couldn't put into one half hour even one half of doing McHugh's great songs. But we couldn't bring this tribute to a close without including one of the hits from Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adams' new Broadway hit as the girls go. So here's one of Broadway's current show tunes. And by the way, if you don't know it already, you'll want to know it. Next moment, you came along for his contribution to the great popular music of America, the Association of American Railroad Space Tribute to Jimmy McHugh. The lasting tribute to Jimmy McHugh and to his wonderful songs, the railroad hour is presenting him with a parchment scroll. And here to accept it today, which also happens to be his birthday is Mr. Jimmy McHugh. It's a great joy on the nicest birthday present I could have. Hearing you and Lou Steele sing all of my songs, I just brought back such wonderful memories. This has been a great day and I'll never forget it. Say, Jim, I bet you and Harold Adams who knew something like this would happen last year when you wrote this great tune. It's a most unusual day. You like throwing my worries away. As an old native born Californian would say it's a most unusual day. It's a most unusual time. I keep feeling my temperature climb. If my heart won't behave in the usual way. Well, there's only one thing to say. It's a most unusual, most unusual, most unusual day. Happy birthday to you. Keep writing hit after hit in the years to come. Will you? Oh, folks, next week, the railroad hour will pay tribute to the great team of writers, Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz and their score for bandwagon. You'll hear many, many big hits. And among them, this old favorite for the law, not enough. You can face the music brought to you this week at this time by the American Railroads. These railroads are your hometown parkers. They are an essential, dependable working part of the life of thousands of cities and towns all over America. Railroads employ local people, often by supplies locally. They own local property and pay local taxes on it. They are responsible citizens and good neighbors in your own hometown. Well, it looks as though we're ready to pull out. And so until next week, goodbye. Gordon Macrae is now being seen in the Warner Brothers Technicolor production, Look for the Silver Lining. Tonight's tribute, the part of Jimmy McHugh was played by Barney Phillips and Don Randolph was Harold Adams. Now for Lucille Norman, the sportsman John Rarigan, his orchestra and your host, Gordon Macrae, a hearty invitation to meet us again next week at the same place on your dime. We'll have more songs and an exciting tribute to Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz and their wonderful score for the bandwagon. This is Marvin Miller speaking.