Song of the Week: Silver Bells By Evans and Livingston

Ray Evans and Jay Livingston were classmates at the University of Pennsylvania and played together in a school swing band called The Continentals. In 1940 they wrote a song called "Goodbye Now" that made its way into the Olsen & Johnson review The New Hellzapoppin' of 1941. It's was a fairly unremarkable song and encapsulated their songwriting career as WWII came to America. They told show business "Goodbye Now" as Livingston ended up in the Army and Evans went to work in an aircraft factory.

When Livingston got back from the service, fellow songwriter Johnny Mercer encouraged them to seek employment in the motion picture industry and they managed to get a contract at Paramount. It was there that they struck it big, composing the title tune for the movie, To Each His Own. At one point in 1946, five different recordings of the song were in the Billboard Top 10 simultaneously.

After that they hit their stride and wrote three Academy Award Best Song Oscar winners between 1948 and 1956: "Buttons and Bows," "Mona Lisa" and "Que Sera, Sera." Number One Hits and awards are nice, of course, but if you want immortality you write a Christmas song. And they got that assignment in 1950 for the Bob Hope picture, The Lemon Drop Kid.

Adopted from the Damon Runyon story of the same name, the picture features Hope as a gambler who owes money to the mob and ends up disguising himself as a corner Santa Claus on the streets of New York. It was originally titled "Tinkle Bells" until Evan's wife objected. "Are you out of your mind? Do you know what the word tinkle means?"

They went back to work. Keeping the tune they reworked the lyrics to fit the setting of Christmas in New York.

City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style
In the air there's a feeling of Christmas
Children laughing, people passing, meeting smile after smile
And on every street corner you hear

Silver bells, silver bells
It's Christmas time in the city...

Even though it was a Bob Hope movie, if you wrote songs for Paramount, it was going to be Bing Crosby that got first crack at it. In September of that year Bing and Carol Richards cut the song for Decca and the single was released that October. It was so successful that Paramount decided they didn't do the song justice in the movie and called back Hope and co-star Marilyn Maxwell for a December re-shoot for a February 1951 release.

Livingston would jokingly refer to it over the years as "Our Annuity" as the sizable royalty checks that would come in as scores of artists sang the song and rerecorded it for various holiday albums and television performances. Hope did his part by featuring it in his annual NBC Christmas show.

Musical tastes changed and the duo ended their careers writing theme songs for television shows such as Bonanza and Mr. Ed. Unfortunately, no one ever had the foresight to get Mr. Ed and Lorne Greene to sing "Silver Bells" on a Bonanza Christmas special.