Thank God It’s Freitag, because that is the day I get to share my latest YouTube discoveries. Here’s a pair, posted by zarahliliwen, of the one and only Zarah Leander. Consider it a Before and After video experience. The first is from one of her classic films. In the second, she is tackling (and I mean, tackling!) Cole Porter’s “Wunderbar” from Kiss Me Kate in a TV revue.

In case you’ve never heard of her, Zarah Leander (March 15, 1907 – June 23, 1981) was a Swedish-born singer and glamorous film actress who had a long and controversial career in Europe. Her star was tainted by her work in German films under the Nazi regime, but she managed a comeback after the war, regaining new generations of fans. Despite the onus of her propaganda-era ventures (she always denied having any Nazi sympathies), she is a talent to be reckoned with, a force of nature who is as timeless as she is unique. She may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but she certainly knew how to put over a song. Here’s a link to her Wikipedia entry.

The beauty of her features hardened over time, and her distinctive contralto voice (which had true operatic grandeur) got deeper until it was practically a basso profundo. When I was in college, I used to play her LPs for friends and ask them to guess who the singer was. Invariably, everyone assumed she was a man.  Perhaps that is why I like her so much. She’s campy, chic, and gloriously eccentric, but most all of all she had balls.