Grandma

WHAT DO WE KNOW about H. W. Hanemann? That he lived from August 8, 1895, to September 2, 1968. That he wrote the screenplay for “Flying down to Rio,” as well as “The Great Jasper,” “Rafter Romance,” and “The Meanest Gal in Town,” all from the 1930s, but only the last-named offering the – what’s the opposite of “timeless”? Whatever it is, that’s what describes Swedish-dialect comedy of El Brendel. We know that Hanemann wrote books, and that two of them are “As Is, a Book of Miscellaneous Revelations” (1923) and “The Facts of Life, a Book of Brighter Biography.” And that he wrote songs, many of them spoofs of past-century weepers. The songs appeared in “Judge” magazine, and were collected in a volume titled “Heart-Wrecking Songs.” The most enduring of them seems to be the one performed below, which I first heard in a lively Spike Jones version.