Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2018 November 25

= November 25 =

These Foolish Things in Train of Events
In the film Train of Events, a man murders his wife as These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You) plays on the gramophone. I would like to know the artist who recorded this version. It is a male singer, probably British by the accent, and the record had a His Master's Voice label. Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 19:55, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
 * FYI, IMDb is no help. I'm coming up empty. There seems to be a lot of clips available online - do you know if any of them have the song? Have you tried a reverse lookup app like Shazam? Or maybe we could try to read the label? From the write-ups I've encountered while searching, I assume it's a pretty significant scene. Matt Deres (talk) 20:22, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I suggest a possibility is Leslie Hutchinson. A big star in Britain during the 1920s and 30s, he was one of the earliest to record the song, on HMV in 1936, and his version became very popular there. However he fell out of favour due to his various actual and rumoured affairs (exacerbated by his being Black), so it's plausible that Ealing Studios in 1949 might show and use his record but not openly credit him. Someone with access to his recording and the film's soundtrack could compare the two.
 * If it is Hutchinson, the use of his (widely familiar) recording in the film – it plays on a gramophone while a man strangles his unfaithful wife – would cleverly underscore the action because of his by-then sexually-tarnished reputation.
 * Another possibility is that the the HMV record seen in the shot is merely a prop, and the song's rendition, along with the rest of the film's music, is provided by The Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra as credited by the British Film Institute here (shown as TPO on the page but linking to an entry for TPC&O explicitly listing the film) with a vocalist whose identity would now be difficult, but perhaps not impossible, to uncover. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.130.195} 90.200.131.235 (talk) 23:21, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I haven't been able to find a clip with the song in. I don't think it's the Hutch version - I think the phrasing is slightly different, but of course I haven't been able to listen to the film version again to compare properly. It could be a prop record, but to use a real record label on a prop record seems to me to be unlikely. DuncanHill (talk) 09:56, 28 November 2018 (UTC)