News paper cutting.Que Sera Sera By G K Gupta (thanks Deccan Herald)

Que Sera Sera

By G K Gupta

The song was an instant hit in the USA and equally popular elsewhere.

Those fans of Alfred Hitchcock, now in their 70s, will recollect the great movies of that master of suspense, like ‘North by Northwest,’ ‘Psycho,’ ‘The Birds’ and others. But what fascinated me most was ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much,’ released  in India during the late 1950s. This is the only Hitchcock movie with a song. The song  ‘Que Sera Sera’ (Whatever will be, will be)  sung by Doris Day has not been outdated by the ravages of time nor its impact  abated. Written by Livingston and Evans, the song received the 1956 Academy Award for the best original song. The song was an instant hit in the USA, the UK and equally popular elsewhere. Doris Day made it the signature-song for her popular TV shows. Popularity was such that ‘Que Sera Sera’ was the name given to the first US aircraft which landed at South Pole in 1956. A duet in the Hindi movie ‘Pukar’, released in 2000 has so aptly borrowed the refrain of this song — ‘Jo bhi ho, so ho...’ ‘Que Sera Sera’ is so admirably fused into the fabric of the plot. It is said that Hitchcock was keen to have Jimmy Stewart for ‘The  Man Who Knew Too Much.’ But the agents insisted that with Stewart he will also have to take Doris Day as co-star. When Hitchcock agreed, Doris Day demanded a song. Hitchcock put a condition that the song should be such that a mother would sing for a child. Doris Day was reluctant to sing a child’s song, a lullaby, which she thought could never be a hit. Not enthused, she did that in one take but it became the biggest hit of her career. What makes ‘Que Sera Sera’ so very special is undoubtedly its great simplicity, deployment of quaint foreign phrase and the imagery. The element of fatality that runs throughout the song may have answers to the currently raging questions: How long will the current global economic crisis last? Will there be an end to the violent acts of terrorism in many parts of the world? How long will it take to completely overcome the Somali pirates now operating in the Gulf of Aden? Well, the answer to all these and the other so-called million-dollar questions is convincingly simple — Que Sera Sera — whatever will be, will be...