1956 Doris Day: Que Sera Sera

Back in the 1980's, Birds Eye ran a TV ad campaign in the UK for their Steakhouse Grills, To whit, a gang of builders on their way home in a van ponder what their wives had waiting for their dinners. "Will it be chips or jacket spuds? Will it be salad or frozen peas? Will it be mushrooms? Fried onion rings? You'll have to wait and see!", though to a man they make it clear they hoped it was the chips. It's an advert I've never forgotten due to its immense irritation factor; instead of running the risk of being served up with something they weren't fussed on, why the @*!$ didn't they just let their wives know they wanted chips before they went to work? To my young mind, leaving something so simple and basic to luck seemed like a ludicrous proposition - what was the matter with these people?

What have chips got to do with Doris Day? Two things really, the first being that the builder's were musing to the tune of 'Que Sera Sera' and their own fatalistic predicament mirrors the lyric of the song; Doris asks her mother if she would grow up to be pretty or rich and her mother responds with an unhelpful "Whatever will be, will be. The future's not ours to see". OK, so growing up to be pretty or rich is an end less easily attainable than telling your wife you fancy chips, but message is the same, a lazy shoulder shrug that life is something that happens to you rather than to be lived. Things work out well enough for Doris in the song, but I've always found the sheer inertia and free will denial of that lyric frustrating to the point of hatred.

Which is perhaps odd because I don't hate 'Que Sera Sera'. And this brings me to the second 'thing' that the song has to do with those builders - the tune. It's undeniable that the melody of the song is instantly recognisable and, along with the pithy philosophy of the title, sticks in the mind like flies on glue. In fact, it's versatility is evident by its ubiquity; I'm guessing that it's so ingrained that a great many people made the link with the lyrics and those builders without a second thought. Much covered across the genres, the basic tune has been adopted as football chants, used to sell life insurance and it's always something that gets wheeled out in films or on TV wherever a happy piece of good fortune needs a soundtrack.

And that itself is kind of ironic given the context in which the song originally appears in Hitchcock's 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' (I won't spoil it, watch it yourself), though for her own part Day gives the song the right amount of breeze to make all my criticisms above largely redundant and further defuse any ticking bombs of resentment. But really, the song's the star here and in the final analysis it's perhaps the most telling illustration of its quality is that such a freewheeling nursery rhyme jingle can disguise it's own chin stroking depths with a wink and a smile that lets you know that everything will be alright. As I say, I don't buy into that but for three minutes at least Day manages to make it sound plausible enough.