One of the wonderful things about watching the movie Thoroughly Modern Millie again, after learning the musical, is realizing how great a job the writers of the musical have done in keeping the spirit of the original, yet adding delightful things to it. I recently watched the movie with some of the cast members I worked with and we exclaimed excitedly whenever we recognised lines that were also in the musical.

Instead of using many of the standards from the movie, only three songs were kept. "Thoroughly Modern Millie", "Ah Sweet Mystery" and "Jimmy". The rest of the songs are written to suit the time and style, but not only that, they are brilliant pieces of original work. It's one of those cast recordings I enjoy every single song from.

To get to the meat of the matter, let's discuss Carol Channing. Piece of work! Megan Thomas who played Mrs Meers in the production I was in, had worked with her before and would impersonate her for our enjoyment. What's interesting is how in one scene, Carol would by flying past Millie on a plane and yelling in her characteristically Carol Channing voice the word "Raspberries". A lot of us puzzled over what it meant and dismissed it as something Carol came up with.

But this is what Carol says in a clip on YouTube. It was in the script! What I think, is that it was a direction to blow raspberries at Millie. But she didn't realise what it meant and said it instead. And no one dared to correct her because she was Carol Channing. And it was funny that way! Click here to find out more about the origins of blowing a raspberry.