Several people have e-mailed to ask if the punishment music I used on Friday during The Harris Challenge was for real. Yes, it was.
When it was announced that Toni Tennille and Daryl Dragon were divorcing after 40 years, newspapers and websites were filled with headlines like “Love Didn’t Keep Them Together,” a reference to the biggest of their 1970s-era hits (along with dreck like “Muskrat Love,” which was voted The Worst Song Ever three times by my listeners).
In addition to all of its play on Top 40 radio at the time, “Love Will Keep Us Together” (written by Neil Sedaka), was also featured in one of the worst movies ever made. It was called “Sextette,” starring Mae West — yes, the sexy screen goddess of four decades earlier, who was 85 years old when this celluloid disaster was made in 1978. Her onscreen lover in “Sextette” was the then-34-year-old Timothy Dalton, nine years before he became James Bond.
In one scene, Dalton segues from some incredibly stilted dialogue into the lyrics of “Love Will Keep Us Together,” with occasional vocal contributions by West as she walks around the set primping and preening. If it’s not the worst musical scene captured on film, then it’s a close second to the Village People in “Can’t Stop The Music” (directed by Nancy Walker at the height of her fame as Rhoda’s mother).
I can’t embed the Dalton-West duet, but you can watch it for yourself here.