#50: When The White Lilacs Bloom Again by Lawrence Welk

City: Edmonton, AB
Radio Station: CFRN
Peak Month: October 1956
Peak Position in Edmonton: #7
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #70
YouTube: “When The White Lilacs Bloom Again”

Lawrence Welk was born in 1903 in the hamlet of Strasburg, North Dakota. His German-speaking parents emigrated to American from Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine). The Welk family lived in a homestead in Strasburg that is now a tourist attraction. When he was nine years old, Lawrence Welk left public school to work full-time on the family farm. Welk decided on a career in music and persuaded his father to buy a mail-order accordion for $400 (equivalent to $5,843 in 2023). He promised his father that he would work on the farm until he was 21, in repayment for the accordion. He was good on his word and after reaching age 21, he set his sights on a music career.

After a tedious grind of playing one-night stands with pickup bands, Welk formed a three-piece “Biggest Little Band in America” to help inaugurate radio station WNAX in Yankton, South Dakota. In the 1920s, in the Dakotas’, Welk was a band leader variously for the Hotsy Totsy Boys and the Honolulu Fruit Gum Orchestra. The Lawrence Welk Orchestra scored an immediate success and began a daily radio show, which lasted from 1927 to 1936.

Over the years, Welk developed the style that would make him famous: bouncing, effervescent, with a steady beat that invited dancing. He found the name for it—“champagne music”—while broadcasting from the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh in 1938.

Welk’s big band performed across the country, but particularly in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas. In the early 1940s, the band began a 10-year stint at the Trianon Ballroom in Chicago, regularly drawing crowds of several thousand. His orchestra also performed frequently at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City during the late 1940s.

The Welk band continued playing in some of the biggest hotels and ballrooms across the country before appearing on Los Angeles TV in 1951 with The Lawrence Welk Show. The show was recorded at the Aragon Ballroom in Venice Beach, California. High ratings led to a summer replacement show two years later on ABC. In 1955 The Lawrence Welk Show debuted for national syndication on ABC.

As a recording artist, Lawrence Welk began to record in 1928. But it was in 1938 that “Colorado Sunset” became a national hit, peaking at #17 on the Billboard pop chart. It was one of four singles to crack the Top 20, with “I Won’t Tell A Soul” peaking at #8. He repeated his success with single 78RPM releases, with “The Moon Is A Silver Dollar” climbing to #7.

In the 1940s, Lawrence Welk’s biggest hit was in 1944 with “Don’t You Sweetheart Me”, a #2 smash hit. While in the 1950s, both “Oh Happy Day” and “Tonight You Belong To Me” (the latter with the Lennon Sisters) peaked at #3 on the Cashbox Top 100 Singles chart in 1953 and 1956 respectively.

In 1956, “Moritat” and “The Poor People of Paris” were both Top 20 hits on the Billboard pop singles charts. “Weary Blues” with the McGuire Sisters, was a Top 40 hit that year. Welk also released “When The White Lilacs Bloom Again”.

“When The White Lilacs Bloom Again” was cowritten by Franz Doelle and Fritz Rotter. Doelle was born in Mönchengladbach, Germany, in 1883. He worked on over fifty films as a composer. His first was in 1929, When the White Lilacs Bloom Again (German: Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht). Other notable films he scored for include Victor and Victoria (German: Viktor und Viktoria), about a female impersonator (1933). This was remade in subsequent years in France (George and Georgette, 1934), England (First A Girl, 1935), Argentina (My Girlfriend, the Transvestite, 1975), and the USA (Victor/Victoria, 1982).

1933 Poster for Viktor und Viktoria

Fritz Rotter was born in Wein, Austria-Hungary, in 1900. In the 1920s, like so many artists, he moved to Berlin. Here he worked together with Robert Stolz and Ralph Benatzky and Rudolf Friml. He wrote hit lyrics and composed film music and film songs, which were sung by Richard Tauber, among others. Along with his brother Alfred he owned several Berlin theatres during the Weimar Republic. Between 1929 and 1933, he helped score 18 films. However, in 1933, Fritz Rotter had to leave Berlin because of his Jewish origins. First he went to his home country of Austria. But when National Socialism gained the upper hand there as well, he emigrated to England in 1936 and to the USA a year later. Here he wrote screenplays for numerous films. After the war, he returned to Europe and continued to write screenplays and hit lyrics.

Fritz Rotter, 1932

In total, Fritz Rotter wrote about 1200 texts for the “light muse” in his life. In 1955, under the pseudonym M. Rotha, Ritter wrote “That’s All I Want From You”. It was a #3 hit single for Jaye P. Morgan, and also recorded by Dinah Washington, Dean Martin, Tommy Sands, Joe Simon, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Johnny Crawford, Connie Stevens, and Larry Darnell. Ritter wrote songs that were variously recorded by June Valli, In his retirement, Rotter moved to Switzerland and died at the age of 84 in 1984.

In 1953 a talking-picture version was released of When the White Lilacs Bloom Again (German: Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht). It starred West German actress Magda Schneider.

Manga Schneider in poster for the 1953 remake of the
Berolina/Herzog-Filmverleih film Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht

The plot for When the White Lilacs Bloom Again  concerns the marriage of struggling Wiesbaden ballad singer Willy Forster and seamstress Therese. Their marriage is plagued with constant financial difficulties. After a heated argument, Willy leaves Therese, unaware that she is pregnant. Thus, Therese becomes a single mother when Evie is born. She raises her daughter with the help of Willy’s friend, Peter.

Fifteen years later, Willy, who now has an international career as a singer under his stage name, ‘Bill Perry’, returns to Wiesbaden as part of a European tour. He goes straight to see Therese, who does not mention that they have a daughter. However, Evie is a big fan of Bill Perry and she gets to know him anyway. Therese confides in Evie the truth about her father, and the girl later tells Willy that she is his daughter.

However, Willy’s visit does not bring about the expected happy ending. Instead, Therese and Peter recognize that they are really meant for each other, and Willy comes to realize that his happiness does not lie with Therese, but rather with his longtime manager, Ellen.

The film ends at Frankfurt Airport with Peter, Therese and Evie there to see Willy and Ellen off. Willy promises his tearful daughter that he will be back to see her the following year, when the white lilacs bloom again.

The music was accompanied by German lyrics. Here is the English-language translation:

“When The White Lilacs Bloom Again” peaked at #3 in Halifax (NS), #4 in Chicago, #5 in Milwaukee, #7 in Edmonton (AB), and #15 in San Francisco.

In 1961, Welk had his only number-one hit with the instrumental “Calcutta”. He also scored a minor hit with the theme song for the TV show “My Three Sons”. As well his cover of “Yellow Bird” offered up another piece of champagne music for those wanting a break from rock ‘n roll in 1961. The instrumental peaked at #2 in Calgary, and #5 in Winnipeg and Toronto.

In early 1962, Lawrence Welk released an instrumental cover of the No.1 Del Shannon hit “Runaway”. Next up, Lawrence Welk recorded a version of “Baby Elephant Walk”.

In 1963, the single “Scarlett O’Hara” was a Top 20 hit in Toronto for Lawrence Welk. Into the mid-60s, Lawrence Welk struggled to crack the Billboard Hot 100. His largely instrumental cover of the Sonny & Cher single “The Beat Goes On”  stalled at #104 in 1967. His last single to crack the Top 30 on the Adult Contemporary chart in the USA was in 1968 with
“Green Tambourine”.

Over the decades, Welk became, after Bob Hope, the second-wealthiest performer in show business, and his band and production company became the second-biggest tourist draw of Los Angeles, right behind Disneyland.

“The Lawrence Welk Show” ended on Feb. 25, 1982, after 1,542 performances. He died in 1992 at the age of 89.

March 15, 2025
Ray McGinnis

References:
“It was a ‘Wunnerful’ life,” Grand Forks Herald, Grand Forks, ND, May 19, 1992.
Lloyd Shearer, “Lawrence Welk: The King of Musical Corn,” Parade, November 15, 1970.
Lawrence Welk and Bernice McGeehan, You’re Never Too Young, (Prentice-Hall, 1981).
“Franz Doelle,” Wikipedia.org.

CFRN 1260-AM Edmonton (AB) Top 10 | October 27, 1956