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November 03, 2009

A Look Back at Johnny Mercer, Hollywood's Golden Age Songsmith...

Wall Street Journal | Read Full Story >

The Wall Street Journal:

‘Johnny Mercer: The Dream’s on Me,” a new documentary produced by Clint Eastwood (which airs Wednesday, Nov. 4, on Turner Classic Movies, two weeks before the songwriter’s centennial on the 18th), begins with archival footage of two Southerners, the songwriter Johnny Mercer and the singer and TV star Dinah Shore, dueting on what, over the past half-century, has become Mercer’s most iconic song—“Moon River.” Suddenly, the setting is strange, we can see water and sunlight beaming. (To paraphrase Mercer’s lyrics to “And the Angels Sing.”) We dissolve to a beautiful river, obviously deep in the heart of the American South. It is the Wilmington, in the opening shot from Mr. Eastwood’s 1997 film “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” which flows by Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Ga., where Mercer is buried.



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