Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! 5

Today is September 14. On this day in history, in 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner during the British Seige of Baltimore during the War of 1812. The Key poem was set to music by following the tune of an old drinking song, "To Anacreon in Heaven." The song gradually gained acceptance and became the National Anthem by Act of Congress in 1931. It has four stanzas but only the first is usually sung. It ranges over an octave and a half and is notoriously difficult to sing. My favorite rendition is by Leslie Nielsen as Lt. Frank Drebin in "The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!" You will recollect that there is a plot to kill the visiting Queen of Great Britain at a baseball game. Drebin has been banished from investigation of the incident because of enormous misfeasance up until now. He mugs an opera singer who is to sing the anthem before the game and uses his clothes to get on the field. He is standing there and then realizes that he is to sing the anthem! Well he gives it the old college try. He has forgotten some of the words and hums and mis-states other words. It cracked my up so much when I first saw it, that I couln't catch my breath. I still laugh when I see it on cable.