My Moonlight Madonna --Paul Whiteman Orchestra -- Tribute to Gladys Cooper

Описание: I'm in love with "Poem" by Fibich. I have always liked this melody but hadn't listened to it in many years. Then when I heard it again recently, it triggered a deep nostalgia in me for happier times. It's both sad and beautiful.

My previous post refers to the orchestral version. "Poem" also inspired a vintage pop song with lyrics entitled, "My Moonlight Madonna." I felt like editing videos for both versions. I thought who could portray the moonlit Madonna of the title? Gladys Cooper came to mind, because she was a famous Edwardian beauty in her youth.

Dame Gladys Constance Cooper, DBE (1888 – 1971) was an English actress, theatrical manager and producer, whose career spanned seven decades on stage, in films and on television. 

She portrayed the stern nun in "Song of Bernadette" (1940), the afflicted mothers in "Now Voyager" (1942) and "Love Letters" (1945), and Mrs. Higgins in "My Fair Lady" (1964). Bette Davis said of her: "That gorgeous woman Miss Cooper who played my mother... without a doubt the most beautiful person as well as actress, and a professional. With all her fame and theaters named after her in England, and the great reigning beauty of England for a million years, never was she late one minute, never didn't she know every line...And then you think as these people go, all these beautiful people go, you know it's going to be a new world. We're not going to have that same kind of person anymore... She was literally the rage of London for many, many years."

Gladys Cooper reflected on the power of personality: “I prefer to have a big personality to being known as a beauty.  With a big personality one can do anything. I have seen very pretty actresses on the stage and wondered why they were not real successes. Then I realized they had no personality to lift them over the footlights.”

Gladys was the most popular pinup of World War I. British soldiers carried her picture in their battle tunics. She was an extraordinary woman who started out as a Gaiety Girl and ended up as a Dame of the British Empire.