Schöner Gigolo - Otto Fassel & Orch. Bernard Ette, 1929

Schöner Gigolo - Otto Fassel & Orch. Bernard Ette, Kristall-Electro 1929 (Germany)

NOTE: It's one of the loveliest tangoes composed in inter-war period in Europe (in fact, the composer Leonello Casucci was Italian). In 1931 it was made world-famous by the MGM romantic comedy "Just a Gigolo" with Irene Purcell and William Haines. In 1978 the remake featured David Bowie, Sydney Rome, Kim Novak and Marlene Dietrich in her last appearance on the silver screen. The plot refers to a Prussian officer (David Bowie) who returns home to Berlin following the end of the Great War. Unable to find employment elsewhere, he works as a gigolo in a brothel run by the Baroness (Marlene Dietrich).

Otto FASSEL was a singer popular in Austria in 1920s, who later travelled to Berlin to enjoy several years of high popularity. With onset of nazism in Germany, he left for Paris where - similarily to other German singers of the Jewish origin (e.g. Leo Monosson) - he was not able to find the rewarding reception (possibly, because of the exceptional abundance of outstanding talents in chanson in France, in that time). In the mid-1930s his name forever disappears from the records.