Veda's rendition of "Oceana Roll"

I watched Mildred Pierce for the umpteenth time last night. The scene where Veda sings "Oceana Roll" was just the absolute zenith of camp, and I can't get the song out of my head. Did Ann Blyth actually sing it, or was someone else's voice dubbed in? This is one of my desert island movies. I can watch it over and over.

• Hilarious reactions from Joan/Mildred as if her daughter were doing something as heinous as picking up quarters with her vagina in a Mexican brothel cooch show. The number is quaint, wholesome and innocent. It was a player piano "old" song even in 1945. But, boy, they sure wanted to portray that Veda had gone to the "dark side" and become some sort of whore.

• Was it implied that Wally was fucking Veda when she left home and he got her that singing job?

• In the films of the 30s and 40s, "nightclub singer" was often shorthand for low-rent whore. The end of the scene where Joan and Jack Carson trade barbs is pretty great as well. At the link, Jane Powell gives a athletic interpretation of the song, with a very young Debbie Reynolds in support.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DvdE51HuQcEg

• R1 it wasn't that the song was scandalous. It was that she was singing it in a skimpy costume, on stage, IN PUBLIC, FOR MONEY!!!!! But yeah, they acted like they were watching Veda shoot ping pong balls out of her snatch.

• Ann Blyth DID sing it... she had that weird piping coloratura, which would have been much better had they stayed with the book and emphasized Veda's opera singing (they only barely show it in the Warners' movie).

• Billy McCoy Was a musical boy On the cruiser Alabama He was there at that piana Like a fish down in the sea He would rattle off some harmony, Ev'ry night out on the ocean He would get that raggy notion Start that syncopated motion lovingly, No one could sleep Way out there on the deep When Billy cut loose out at sea.

• At least I wasn't a common frump whose father lived over a grocery store and whose mother took in washing!

  Veda

• That was Ann singing. When she became an adult, Ann did a few big MGM musicals - mostly operettas like "The Great Caruso", "The Student Prince", the remake of "Rose Marie", and "Kismet". She also did tons of tours in shows like "Camelot" and "Carnival".

  http://youtu.be/TaA4GkU11pU

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• And speaking of MGM musicals, here's Jane Powell singing "Oceana Roll" in TWO WEEKS WITH LOVE, Look for a young Debbie Reynolds in this number, and tall, openly gay Carleton Carpenter too - it was in this film that Debbie and Carleton sang the immortal "Aba Daba Honeymoon"

  http://youtu.be/QZYrfPIIHFI

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• The Oceana Roll is a Ragtime tune. You know what that means - it's Negro music! She's not just a cooch dancer, she's a coon shouter.

  Daddy-O

• HD version of Jane Powell's Oceana Roll posted at R3 and here as well.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DvdE51HuQcEg

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• Ann shilling for Hostess. Are those really her kids?

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyR5ZK4WWqc&playnext=1&list=PLD83E135BFAA3C0B6&feature=results_video

  Carol Ann

• R11 gave a good link to the woman singing that song. But go ahead and go back to it just one more time, and in the last 7 seconds, look at HOW LOST that LITTLE BOY is in the lower right hand corner is while dancing!!! It is so damn cute! I just love little boys, the littler the better. Go fishing and overnight camping with them, play a game of NAKED NOVIE STAR with the lad in the tent with a 6-pack of cheap beer and...oh, wait minute, I'll save all that for a different thread.

  Strangers With Candy