Gershwin's Summertime: The Song That Conquered the World

Nov 23, 2011

0h 59m

★ 1.0

Overview

The song "Summertime" was written by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. The lyrics are by DuBose Heyward and although not thought to be directly involved, Ira Gershwin gets an official credit. The song soon developed a life of it's own beyond the original opera and has been recorded and adapted into many different styles of music from jazz to opera, rock to reggae, soul to samba. It has been recorded and performed in many different languages around the world and remains one of the most famous and best loved songs ever written. This documentary looks at its history, how it came to be created, and its subsequent history as it traveled through time and around the world. "Summertime" is the most covered song on the planet. At least 25,000 versions of it exist.

Genres

Documentary

Music

Gershwin's Summertime: The Song That Conquered the World Trailers

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Cast

Narrator

Pauline Black

Larry the Cucumber's vision of the future includes automated robotic hosts telling jokes with random punch lines and musical numbers in which the performers and themes are chosen entirely by chance. As Bob the Tomato quickly points out, the jokes of the future aren't very funny because they don't make sense. Worse, technical malfunctions in the Ventrilomatic hosts actually promote emotional instability. Nonetheless, Bob admits that Larry's vision of the future contains some very cool adaptations of classic songs like Gilbert and Sullivan's fast-talking "Modern Major General" and Binky the Aardvark's solo performance of Mozart's The Barber of Seville. Larry's vision of the future also includes an amusing animated short about greed called "Lunch." Junior Asparagus calls Bob and Larry back to the present with a final song celebrating God's unconditional love.

0.0

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5.3

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4.5

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5.0

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6.9

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0.0

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No Image Available

6.0

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9.0

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5.5

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8.0

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No overview available.

8.7

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6.7

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6.0

Chrisye

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7.5

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6.5

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9.0

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No overview available.

5.6

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Gershwin's Summertime: The Song That Conquered the World

Overview

Genres

Gershwin's Summertime: The Song That Conquered the World Trailers