So I flipped on the TV where just hours earlier I’d been watching one of those Irene Dunne films Irene Dunne thought would be forgotten forever. This channel has shown the flick maybe eight hundred times. I feel bad for Irene Dunne because we live in the same hood, if at different times, and in different sized homes. Ours is half of a duplex, hers a walled castle, vast and decadent. Some hugely stacked pop singer whose name escapes me is trying to live there now. The far end of Waverly Drive is exciting, headline making even. At our end is us. But this post is not about Irene Dunne. It’s about Mitzi Gaynor. Because where Irene Dunne was struggling through a half assed wartime script with a 4F leading man, Mitzi Gaynor is now singing a verse of the Frank Loesser tune “I Believe In You” to Santa. That got my attention because it’s from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which is funny as hell and the only movie musical I can watch fifty times. Robert Morse is the leading man. Michele Lee sings the first take of I Believe In You. Nails it. But no Michele Lee is Mitzi Gaynor. She’s a pretty lady, though. Nice legs. Fur coats to die for, and this being the 1970’s entire herds of mink must have met their nasty little ends to don her in such luxury. Aside from those legs and the wanton mink slaughter, though, it’s quite unwatchable. Not unwatchable in a Star Wars Christmas Special kind of way, but unwatchable in a 1970’s King Family Christmas Special kind of way. Perhaps you remember. Or perhaps you’ve forgotten. I know I’d forgotten.

Oh god, a Perry Como Christmas Special, and I can’t find the remote.

Mitzi Gaynor coming unwrapped.