TOD:
My favorite Johnny Mathis number?
Read this short excerpt from my memoir, and you will see:
Paul [Francis Webster] and Jerry Livingston had been hired by Marty Melcher to write a
tune for Julie, a suspense drama that Doris Day was making at MGM in
1956.
“Her co-star, Louis Jourdan, convinced her that the song was all
wrong for her,” Webster recalled. “It didn’t fit her image.
“And, I was the one who suggested that Frenchman for the part.”
Rights to the song reverted back to the songwriters. They placed it
with a New York music publisher, who sent it on to Johnny Mathis. The
singer recorded the number, and it became a smash. Years later, it hit
again as a Country/Western entry, sung by Slim Whitman and, years
after that, my wife (#3) Sandy and I danced to it at our wedding.
Its title: “The Twelfth of Never.”