"Midnight, the Stars and You"

I've been an avid music record (vinyl) collector for the last 12 years, focusing on top-charting hits in the US starting from 1920. Interesting fact, the song "Midnight, the Stars and You" (by Ray Noble & His Orchestra) -- the song playing in the ballroom scene and again at the very end when the picture of the ball is seen reading "1921" -- is actually from 1934 (recorded, released, and charted in 1934). I find this interesting for many reasons. In spite of that 13-year gap, I feel it was a completely fitting choice for this movie. I'm also a retro-junkie and history buff. In spite of the fact that people tend to think of the 1920's and 1930's as completely different eras from each other, I completely disagree; I know the "Roaring '20's" economy contrasted sharply with the Great Depression economy that would follow, but everything about American pop culture in 1929 carried over strongly into the next decade. Also, this whole time frame was very diverse.

There are some exceptions -- swing was king in the second half of the '30's (and '40's), but elements of swing were present in music/dance since the late-'20's (and big-band music certainly began even earlier, about 1919); many 1930's hits were sophisticated "crooner" romantic songs (think Bing Crosby), but this started in the late-'20's, as well; movies were sound as opposed to the silent ones of the 1920's, but sound in movies was going very mainstream already in 1929, and silent films lingered as late as 1936 (i.e. "Modern Times" with Charlie Chaplin). By the way, the advent of full-fledged rock and roll in the 1950's was derived from boogie-woogie (popular since the late-1920's), swing, and R&B (believe it or not present in many ways since the late-1930's), and doo-wop could be heard as early as 1939 (starting with The Ink Spots' #3 national hit "My Prayer" that year). Technicolor was present as early as 1929, like in Academy-Award nominated THE HOLLYWOOD REVUE OF 1929 (1929). Walt Disney revolutionized animation in the 1930's -- amazing to think that FANTASIA was in movie theaters in 1940 -- but still, both the '20's and '30's had Fleischer animation competing with (similar-looking to Fleischer) Disney animation -- think Betty Boop in the 1930's. In both the '20's and '30's, the difference between rural America and the rest of America was like night and day, as rural America was still largely unchanged since the late-19th century (see then-contemporary hit movies OF MICE AND MEN [1939] and BOOM TOWN [1940] to see examples of that).

All that said, the stereotypical "Roaring '20's" culture in its full force also carried into the 1930's -- you know, the flapper/Art Deco/speakeasy (remember the Prohibition ended in 1933)/box-shaped-car/hat-and-cane-sporting men (like Chaplin) -- all that jazz (pun intended). Interestingly, I consider this culture to have a strange and eerie quality about it. (Watch GRAND HOTEL [1932] to see what I mean, for instance the pacing and dialogues capture it.) It wasn't just flirtatious women with short hair and caps and sequined short black dresses with long necklace beads dancing to songs like "The Charleston" (a #1 hit in 1925 by Paul Whiteman & His Orchstra) -- although that was a part of it. It's just a culture so utterly foreign from the present and genuinely with a lot of strangeness, exemplified by eerie orchestral hits with grainy sound and very strange-sounding horns with dissonant melodies and lack of musical structure as we know it. Try listening to some of it, it's like having a portal to a different dimension (no joke!). I played one such song -- "Margie" by Claude Hopkins & His Orchestra (#5 hit in 1934) -- for my friend and he told me it was blowing his mind and how in contrast to today's song structure he didn't know "WHAT it was doing."

As a side note, I'd argue that this culture lasted all the way into the 1950's, and if you'd like one example (out of MANY) to see for yourself I point to "I Love Lucy," including female characters wearing drab (in color and style) long coats & dresses, very small hoop earrings (just like flapper Betty Boop had worn 2 decades earlier [!]), flapper-type Lucy dressed just like I described above (including sequined tight black dress and long beaded necklaces) saying she's a "Wicked City Woman" trying (unsuccessfully) to scare off her cousin Ernie who's overstayed his welcome, the Deco furniture in the New York apartment, sense of humor reminiscent of that of (the MUCH earlier) silent comedy films [there's even an episode with Groucho Marx, who had been popular since the 1930's but sense of humor carried over from the previous decade's silent comedies], slang (indignant "Fresh!" "Did you call me up to make gags?") and so on. (Although I know there are also elements in the show of culture that one would associate nowadays with the '40's, like some of the styles and fashions and Ricky's big-band Latin orchestra sounding nothing like the strange sounds I described earlier, but more like the orchestras of Tommy Dorsey ('30's/'40's), Jimmy Dorsey ('30's/'40's), Glenn Miller ('30's/'40's), Xavier Cugat ('30's/'40's), or Perez Prado ('50's but in that same style).)

Well alright, so I know I LOVE LUCY isn't exactly creepy in the strict sense of the word, but I stand by it certainly having strangeness about it and the environment in it.

All of this is a very long way of saying the "Roaring '20's" culture -- that lasted long past 1929 (in spite of other cultural elements being in play) -- was a good choice in its strangeness and its being eerie, as well as being so completely distant and foreign from anything familiar to a modern audience (and an audience in 1980), for such a strange and frightening ghost story as THE SHINING. This is very well captured in the ballroom scene with its period spirits dancing and mingling on Deco armchairs and sinister Lloyd the bartender, and with "Midnight, the Stars and You" and its eerie and dissonant instrumentation playing as from a different and strange dimension that still somehow lives on in the Overlook Hotel. (And this is just before the supernatural goes from very eerie to viciously horrific in the movie.)

And "Midnight, the Stars and You," while being from 1934, sounds easily like it could have been from 1921, because the culture (musical and otherwise) reflected in that song (and movie scene) was just as much a part of American life in 1921 as it was in 1934 and even long past that.