Green Door

"(The) Green Door" is a 1956 popular song with music by Bob Davie and lyrics by Marvin Moore. The lyrics describe a nondescript establishment with a green door behind which "a happy crowd" play piano, smoke and "laugh a lot", and in which the singer is not allowed.

Possible inspirations

According to the website Songfacts the lyrics were inspired by a popular music club in Dallas, Texas where the kids who were not allowed in hung around outside a yellow door. The colour was then changed to green in the song because it "sounded better".

The song has also been said to refer to the lesbian Gateways club (first opened in 1930), which had a green door and featured in the movie The Killing of Sister George. though this seems unlikely.

Possible literary origins

"The Green Door" is also a short story by O. Henry from his 1906 book The Four Million, in which a man named Rudolf Steiner, though apparently not the Austrian esotericist, is handed an advertisement for an establishment named The Green Door. He enters a green door where he meets a starving young woman, buys her dinner, and they talk (nothing explicit happens); finally Steiner tells her that he will visit her again the next day and there is romance in the offing. Eventually it turns out that the advertisement was for an entirely different "Green Door", a theatre. O. Henry uses the eponymous green door as a symbol for everyday adventures which he encourages us to seek out.

It is also possible that the song is a reference to a H. G. Wells short story, "The Door in the Wall".

Another possible origin comes from the green colour of a certain union card. Without a union card, one could not experience work and income, the 'happy times behind the green door'.

Cultural impact

The song's title inspired the title of a short story that was made into a pornographic film, Behind the Green Door. People "in the know" realize that the Mitchell brothers were inspired by an anonymous underground short story that circulated (via xeroxed copies) from the time of the second world war.

It is also behind the name of a live album by Irish American punk band Flogging Molly, Alive Behind the Green Door.

A snippet of the song's lyrics are in the Stephen King horror novel The Tommyknockers.

It is also the name of a letter by David Berg, the former leader of the cult Children of God—he used it as a term for molesting little children.

Psychobilly band The Cramps covered the song on their 1981 album, Psychedelic Jungle.

The Spanish pop-punk group Los Nikis made a Spanish version of this song in 1986.

Recordings

The hit version of the song in the United States was recorded by Jim Lowe (backed by the orchestra of songwriter Davie, with Davie also playing piano), and it reached #1 on the Billboard charts in 1956.

In the United Kingdom, Lowe's version reached #8 on the charts, but a version by Frankie Vaughan was even more popular, reaching #2. Another UK recording, by Glen Mason, reached #24 on the UK chart. The most popular version was by rock and roll star Shakin' Stevens which spent four weeks at number one in July 1981.

The Cramps have also recorded the song on the 1981 album, Psychedelic Jungle. In 1964, Bill Haley & His Comets recorded a version for a single release on Decca Records during an unsuccessful attempt to make a comeback with the label that had made them famous with "Rock Around the Clock" (this version was produced by Milt Gabler). Crystal Gayle recorded the song in 1977, and it has since become a fan favorite at her concerts.

Other versions have been recorded by Roland Alphonso, Wynder K. Frog, Houston and Dorsey, Ray Hamilton, Danny Colfax Mallon, Gene McDaniels, Country Dick Montana, Eskew Reeder, Jumpin' Gen Simmons, Skip & Flip, and Skitzo. Country humorist Mayf Nutter re-charted the song in 1973.