CLIFF EDWARDS
by Leonard Maltin

This essay originally appeared in the form of liner notes for Jim Bedoian's excellent CD Cliff Edwards: Vintage Recordings (Take Two 419), which is still available from www.worldsrecords.com.

Some performers enjoy success in their heyday, then fall into obscurity. Others are popular during their lifetime, only to be forgotten in the years that follow. The fate of Cliff Edwards is a bit more unusual. In fact, he is probably the best known/least known performer in show business history. The fact that he introduced the standard "Singin' in the Rain" on screen in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 has guaranteed his inclusion in latter-day surveys of MGM history and celebrations of the movie musical, like That's Entertainment! The fluke of his casting as the voice of Jiminy Cricket in Walt Disney's Pinocchio has granted him a kind of immortality; what man, woman or child hasn't heard him sing "When You Wish Upon a Star?"

The Disney association was also reponsible for introducing him and his ukulele to a new audience of kids in the 1950s on television's Mickey Mouse Club. That's where I first saw him, and became a fan.

As most of Ukulele Ike's fans well know, he died alone and destitute in 1971. His life was plagued by divorce, bankruptcy, and alcoholism. But with it all, he bore no malice, and had a happy outlook on life.

That, I think, is what makes him so special as a performer; there's a lilt to his voice that's positively contagious. Accordingly, when you talk to people who knew and worked with him, they constantly echo the same words: sweet, fun, a good guy.

When pianist/conductor Skitch Henderson was just starting out, he played a number of theater dates with Cliff Edwards as his accompanist, and sums up his impression of Ukulele Ike on stage thusly: "He was fantastic." Henderson adds, "He was very kind to me, and there's a difference between helpfulness and kindness. He was warm towards me as a human being; he knew that I was struggling and he wanted me to be able to work and have a career. When I went back to L.A. and tried to get started, he had an apartment some place up near the old Castle Argyle and he gave me a room there for a while, 'til I could get situated."

Cliff was fairly busy at that time making movies, though his career had already had more than its share of ups and downs. In the earliest days of talkies, he became a featured player at MGM, working in such early musicals as Marianne, Good News, and Lord Byron of Broadway, and alongside his pal Buster Keaton in Doughboys, Parlor Bedroom and Bath, and Sidewalks of New York. He even played dramatic parts in films ranging from Dance, Fools Dance with Joan Crawford to the submarine drama Hell Divers. He was prominently featured in Take a Chance (in which he introduced the beautiful “Night Owl” and a risqué comedy number, “I Did it with my Little Ukulele”), George White's Scandals and George White's 1935 Scandals. Although he worked steadily on the radio and continued to make

Cliff looks at Pinocchio storyboards with Dickie Jones before a recording session

personal appearances, his movie roles shrank year by year; he even took a tiny bit part in Gone With the Wind. He then found himself cast as a sidekick in the grade-B Westerns of such cowboys as Charles Starrett and Tim Holt.

Walt Disney offered Cliff two great opportunities around this time: to act and sing the part of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio, and to introduce the jaunty tune "When I See an Elephant Fly" as one of the crows in Dumbo. Veteran Disney artist Ward Kimball animated both characters, and remarks about Dumbo, "Everybody says, 'That's some of the best animation you ever did, Ward,' and I realize that maybe 80% of it was the great timing we had for the part of Jim Crow, on the voice. His timing was wonderful. That difference in sound wasn't just any old voice; it had a background of years of showmanship, and stage work--vaudeville, Ziegfeld--and he knew what we were looking for. He'd say, 'How about this?' He'd make suggestions; that was very important."

Dick Jones, who played Pinocchio, says from a twelve-year-old's point of view, Cliff was "a fun person to be around. And he always wore a hat with the brim back." Cliff endeared himself to Dickie by working alongside him, instead of sitting on the higher-perched stool which he'd been assigned for the recording sessions. What's more, he'd bring out his uke and play on the spur of the moment. Summing up, Jones says. "'When You Wish Upon a Star?' That's a classic; I haven't heard a version of it that's better yet." Ward Kimball says, simply, "He made that song."

In the 1940s, Cliff moved to New York and launched a daily radio program. The announcer was George Ansbro, who became a good friend--so good that Cliff threw an engagement party for George and his fiancee Joanne, and then sang "When You Wish Upon a Star" at their wedding in 1946. (Joanne Ansbro also recalls that Cliff was accustomed to getting things for free, as many celebrities do; at the end of their engagement party at the Stork Club, the band sardonically played "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" because Cliff had neglected to tip the waiters.)

George says that Cliff "was a character...fun to be around," and recalls that when Cliff went to the Stork Club, there was hardly a famous face in that famous watering hole that he didn't know, from Postmaster James J. Farley to Clark Gable. When Cliff

Cliff sings and plays for Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in Saratoga (1937)

bought a surplus boat from the U.S. government, he enlisted some of his radio colleagues to help him get it into shape, and then had a series of parties on board where, as Ansbro recalled, the guests included Walter Winchell, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Young (like Gable, a former costar from Cliff's days at MGM in the 1930s), and John Carradine.

One of Cliff's colleagues on many of those 1940s radio shows and transcriptions was the master guitarist Tony Mottola, who says, "I have fond memories of Cliff; he was a real sweet man. I don't know much about his personal life. I forget how many times he had been married, but he couldn't play Chicago again because there was a judgment on him from some ex-wife out there." Mottola admired him as a musician, as well, although he remembers that on a recording of "Ukulele Lady," there was a hot solo chorus designed to be played on the uke, and Edwards told Tony, "You play it." Proof of Mottola's fondness for Cliff: there is a framed photo of Ukulele Ike in his den to this day.

The advent of the Mickey Mouse Club gave Cliff's career a new, if temporary, lease on life, and led to the recording of his final album, on the Disneyland label, in 1956. When I asked one of the Mouseketeers, Bobby Burgess, what he remembered most about Cliff, he immediately responded, "Brandy breath." It's a perfect child's memory, all the more understandable since Bobby's parents didn't drink. But he also remembered what a good entertainer Cliff was.

Another Mouseketeer, Tommy Cole, has vivid recollections of working with Cliff not only on the television show, but in personal appearances in the 1950s. "I can remember going over to the hospital just across the street (in Burbank), St. Joseph's Hospital, and I can remember him just delighting the people, and everybody lining up to hear him. Of course, everybody knew his voice. Maybe they didn't know who he was at the time, but they knew the voice of Jiminy Cricket. And these kids just lit up. He played his ukukele and sang for these kids, and I remember that specifically as one time where I realized the power of a personality."

He, too, recalls an incident on the road when "it was fairly obvious that he'd been drinking one night, especially when there's all this whispering and hush-hush between executives, trying to make sure that nobody else could tell that he was drunk."

One thing is certain: Cliff Edwards made an impression on everyone who ever worked with him, just as he did on audiences from the 1920s through the 1950s. This collection of

Cliff even gets Walt Disney smiling in this 1950s photo

recordings captures the many sides of Ukulele Ike, from his earliest obliggato vocal effects work (a sound he called "eefin", or "eefus") to some of his jaunty, uptempo hits.

Cliff personifies the sound of the 1920s in his jazzy tunes like "I Want Somebody to Cheer Me Up" and such classics as "That's My Weakness Now" and "It Goes Like This," but unlike some syncopators of the time, he could just as easily tackle a sentimental song, with great sincerity and purity of voice. Listen to him perform "I'm Crying 'Cause I Know I'm Losing You" and you'd have no indication this was the same singer who was scatting wildly on another tune a moment ago. "Losing You" is also a good example of how effectively he and his ukulele could "sell" a song with minimal support from other musicians. He adapted to any and all musical surroundings, and fares particularly well with the vocal quartet The Eton Boys on two 1934 sides, "Love Is Just Around the Corner" and "One Little Kiss."

Cliff was a consummate performer who got the most out of every lyric, serious or comical, and knew how to enhance a melody with a jazz tinge that was light as air. His range is amply demonstrated on "It Had to be You" and "Melancholy Baby," two of the rare unissued test pressings from 1944 that highlight this disc.

How nice it would be to turn back the clock, and tell Cliff Edwards that his music is still enjoyed and appreciated. He may have been alone in his final years, but he has inspired a latter-day legion of fans who keep his name, and his work, alive.