statman --
Thanks for your clarification. The movie that interests you is
"Kotch," a 1971 film that starred Walter Matthau and was directed by
Jack Lemmon. The song that interests you is "Life Is What You Make
It," written by Marvin Hamlisch (music) and the great Johnny Mercer
(words).
Here is a link to the Internet Movie Data Base's "full cast and crew)
listing for "Kotch:"
IMDB: Kotch: Full Cast and Crew
http://imdb.com/title/tt0067314/fullcredits
DVDs of the film are easily available. Here is the Amazon.com listing:
Amazon.com: Kotch
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00020X87K/qid%3D1099948523/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/104-7245599-1374367
While the IMDB listing contains the "original music" composer credit
for the song, it does not contain a credit for Mathis. (Neither does
a "name search" on the IMDB site for all of Mathis's screen credits.)
This leads me to suspect that Mathis did not sing the song on the
soundtrack. However, Mathis did sing the song at the 1972 Academy
Awards Ceremony, per this site:
TV Tome: Johnny Mathis (about 7/8 down the page)
http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/PersonDetail/personid-20113
And, Mathis recorded the song on a 1972 LP entitled "The First Time
Ever (I Saw Your Face)," where it is identified as "Life is What You
Make It (Theme from Kotch)." Here is a link to the All Music Guide's
listing for that recording, which includes an audio clip of the song:
All Music Guide: Album Search: "The First Time Ever I Saw You Face"
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=ADFEAEE47E1FD84BAC7F20C985354BC1BA60FD07FE44F78F172C0456D3B82D6C872941D779A29181B0FB6ABC66ADFF2EA0160ED1C0EC54F6D8622D5DF0&sql=10:mr2m961o3epc
(The All Music Guide site requires free registration for full access.
If you cannot access the page through the above link for that reason
or for any other reason, you can register from the site's home page,
linked here):
All Music Guide
http://www.allmusic.com/
(You can then do a "song search" for "Life is What You Make It." If
you need help with that process, let me know, I will "walk you through
it.")
You haven't asked whether a recording is available for purchase, but
it isn't as easy to find as most of Mathis's output. According to its
All Music Guide listing, the song that interests you in not included
on any of the many compilations of Mathis hits that have been reissued
over the years.
Further, the only CD version of the album was apparently released in
2000 in the so-called "DTS-CD" format, which may or may not be
playable on your CD or DVD player. A copy of that DTS-CD is available
from an online seller linked here for $21.95:
Fortune3: Johnny Mercer: "First Time Ever"
http://www.fortune3.com/comp72048/?pagesuffix=DTS_Music_Disc-JOHNNY_MATHIS_First_Time_Ever_.html&
Also, this seller of old vinyl purports to have an unused copy of the
LP version in stock:
Greg's Grooves (near the bottom of the page)
http://www.gregsgrooves.com/mathis.html
Finally, two other copies of the LP are currently available on eBay, here:
eBay: Johnny Mathis: The First Time Ever
http://search.ebay.com/johnny-mathis-the-first-time_W0QQsofocusZbsQQsbrftogZ1QQfromZR10QQsacategoryZ-1Q26catrefQ3DC6QQsotrZ2QQsosortpropertyZ1Q26sosortorderQ3D1QQcoactionZcompareQQcopagenumZ1QqcoentrypageZsearch
Additional Information:
If you are curious about the perfectly understandable mistake about
the name of the song in question, the song you cited -- "Life is a
Song Worth Singing" -- was contained on a 1973 Mathis LP called "I'm
Coming Home," and has been included on several currently available
Mathis compilations, the most recent being this one:
Barnes & Noble: The Essential Johnny Mathis
http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?sourceid=00401402266205053872&ean=074646356227&bfdate=11-08-2004+16:06:17
Search Strategy:
I made substantial use of the All Music Guide website at first. After
discovering the issue about the name of the song, I used Google
searches to clear up the confusion and to find copies of the "Klotch"
DVD and the Mathis recording for sale. Here are just a few examples
of those searches:
"life is what you make it" mathis
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=%22life+is+what+you+make+it%22+mathis
kotch "johnny mathis"
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=%22kotch%22+%22johnny+mathis%22
"johnny mathis" "the first time ever I saw"
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&q=%22johnny+mathis%22+%22the+first+time+ever+i+saw+your+face%22
I am confident that this is the information you are looking for. If
anything is unclear, please ask for clarification before rating the
answer.
markj-g |
