The Wizard of Oz (1939) – Judy Garland
Five minutes in, Garland changed history by belching into existence Dorothy’s – and subsequently, our – longing for that fated place.
Composer Harold Arlen was under the gun of having every song for the film already in the can – save for the ultimately most-held iconic and repurposed number. En route to the famed Grauman’s Chinese Theater one day, Arlen asked his wife to pull over, and what poured out of him from the pen to the manuscript was the song dreams are made of.
As the original correctly first marked the tide, there was a place Arlen and lyricist Yip Harburg heard of before delivering something categorically more than a lullaby; a bonafide anthem for all successive original movie songs to model themselves after (and fail at surpassing).
50 First Dates (2004) – Israel Kamakawiwo`ole
Just two weeks ago, The Messenger covered the 18th anniversary of a $200-million-dollar winning rom-com from a bygone era. A splendid mix of buddy humor and devastation finds itself elevated in its closing moments by the late Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s Hawaii-certified, acoustic-laden rendition of the song-in-question that breathtakingly booms over the beautiful arctic backdrop.
Extrapolated from a “spur-of-the-moment” 1988 demo session, sound engineer Milan Bertosa claimed the “largest human she had ever seen in her life” walked in, “played and sang, one take [of a medley combining ‘Over the Rainbow’ and Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’] and it was over.”
From the amnesiac viewpoint of Barrymore’s Lucy, she’s essentially been zapped to a place where she thankfully can’t feel trapped because, within the context, it is the place that she’s dreamed of; many times.
Alpha Dog (2006) – Eva Cassidy
Eva Cassidy’s heartbreaking version of “Over the Rainbow” became BBC2’s Top of the Pops 2’s most requested video ever a few years after her death at the age of 33 in 1996. Later on, her interpretation was immortalized even more so in one of the most underrated crime dramas of the 21st century.
The roman à clef (names-changed biographical recreation, think Citizen Kane) of the Jesse James Hollywood saga stars Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, Justin Timberlake, and Anton Yelchin as youngsters embroiled in a ticking time bomb of tragedy masking itself as a Californian coming of age.
Whether viewers have prior knowledge of the real-life case kick-started by a drug debt unpaid, second-generation filmmaker Nick Cassevetes’ stroke of genius out of the gate cannot be denied. He cuts a home video montage of the real-life actors as innocent toddlers to Cassidy’s “Over the Rainbow” echo-fuel – guaranteeing one will return to the top of the film upon completion, if not to remind themselves to not cry because it’s over, but to smile because it happened. And then, cry some more.
