The White Magnolia Tree

I happened to see a white Magnolia tree yesterday when I was passing though the little North Carolina town of Richfield. Spring hasn't quite come to that part of Carolina yet, so around it was mostly brown, but here was this outrageous white Magnolia tree in full bloom.

It reminded me of hearing, many years ago when I was a student in Montreal, the actress Helen Hayes' recitation of Helen Deutsch's poem, “The White Magnolia Tree.” It was planted inside me, as it were, and it's still there and I still can hear it now exactly as then.

It is surprizingly difficult to find Helen Hayes' recording, given how good it is. The only place I know is here at this link on YouTube, where it is not adequately labelled, and I am not absolutely certain that it is Helen speaking - But it sounds very much as if it were she!

There is a passage in the wiki for Helen Deutsch that goes:

Shortly after Helen's Barnard graduation, she was asked to write something to recite on a radio show to be aired just two days later in honor of the late actress Jane Cowl. Overnight, Helen wrote "The White Magnolia Tree." She then forgot about the poem. In 1957, she was commissioned by NBC-TV to provide a poem to be recited by Helen Hayes for the 50th anniversary celebration of General Motors. She got out her old poem, and Helen Hayes recited it with such tenderness that within a week thousands of people had requested a copy of the poem. General Motors provided it in booklet form. Helen Hayes herself made a 45 rpm of the poem and sent out hundreds of copies. Today it is still searched for on the internet, some having success in finding it and others still looking.

In Australia, the Helen Hayes version was superseded when Gay Kayler (Gay Kahler) recorded her version of The White Magnolia Tree with a lush 32-piece orchestral backing. This became Gay's signature tune and remained in EMI and Readers Digest catalogues for more than 33 years.

Gay Kahler and her husband, Johnny Ashcroft, did a version of it with a 32-piece orchestra, which reviewers say is "iconic," better than Helen's. I have never heard it but I can believe them after hearing some of their other songs. It's only available, again surprizingly, on old vinyl in Australia.