I Love You Truly was originally a parlour song written by the American singer-songwriter Carrie Jacobs-Bond. Since its publication in 1901 it has been sung at weddings, recorded by numerous artists over many decades, and heard on film and television. Jacobs-Bond was invited to sing at the White House by three different presidents, and each time sang I Love You Truly. Carrie Jacobs-Bond began to write songs in 1894 to supplement the income of her husband, Frank Bond. When he died in 1895, she returned briefly to her hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, where I Love You Truly was written. She then moved to Chicago where she painted china and rented out rooms to make ends meet. There she continued to write songs and eventually sought to publish them herself. With the encouragement and assistance of friends, including a loan from contralto Jessie Bartlett Davis, in 1901 she published a sheet music collection of her compositions called Seven Songs as Unpretentious as the Wild Rose, one of which was I Love You Truly. She published it again as a separate song in 1906, at the same time correcting an oversight and filing for copyright. It sold over a million copies, one of the earliest songs composed by a woman to achieve that distinction. It was categorized as a high-class ballad, a genre of the period applied to serious songs that were suitable for cultured venues as opposed to vaudeville. It became a standard at wedding ceremonies. It also became a mainstay of barbershop harmony arrangers and singers. For more than a hundred years I Love You Truly has been sung at weddings, recorded by Bing Crosby and numerous other artists over the years, and heard on television and in films. Donna Reed and James Stewart are serenaded with a vocal duo rendition of I Love You Truly on their wedding night in the classic Frank Capra fantasy film It’s a Wonderful Life. In the Encore Films production the newly-weds dance to an orchestral waltz version of I Love You Truly, while a funky, party-atmosphere vocal arrangement is heard during the end credits.

I LOVE YOU TRULY – THE RECORDINGS

The song I Love You Truly was a hit record for Elsie Baker in 1912 (Victor B-12069). It has been recorded by numerous artists, including Sophie Braslau (1916), Dusolina Giannini (1926), Al Bowlly (1934), Bing Crosby (1934), Erskine Hawkins (1942), Helen Traubel (1946), Jeanette MacDonald (1947), and numerous other versions including a 1951 duet by Jo Stafford and Nelson Eddy, and by Pat Boone in a 1962 duet with his wife Shirley.

I LOVE YOU TRULY – AT THE CINEMA AND ON TV

As early as 1929 the song I Love You Truly was heard in the comedy film Wise Girls and has since been heard in numerous other films. As mentioned above, the song was also sung by Bert (Ward Bond) and Ernie (Frank Faylen) as they serenaded George (James Stewart) and Mary Bailey (Donna Reed) on their wedding night in It’s a Wonderful Life.

It has also been heard on television, often for comic effect. It was sung by Elizabeth Patterson (pre-Mrs. Trumbull character) in the I Love Lucy episode “Marriage License” (1952), and by Jean Stapleton (as Edith Bunker) in All in the Family. Betsy Randle (as Amy Matthews) sang it in the Boy Meets World episode “It’s About Time”.

I LOVE YOU TRULY – THE ORIGINAL 1901 LYRICS

I love you truly, truly dear,

Life with its sorrow, life with its tear

Fades into dreams when I feel you are near

For I love you truly, truly dear.

 

Ah! Love, ‘tis something to feel your kind hand

Ah! Yes, ‘tis something by your side to stand;

Gone is the sorrow, gone doubt and fear,

For you love me truly, truly dear.

 

I LOVE YOU TRULY – THE FULL SYNOPSIS

I Love You Truly is a lyrical evocation of romance. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony. Neither condition is immune from the other because love doesn’t bring and never has brought total happiness. On the contrary, it’s a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield, sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we’re doing the right thing. This is the starting point of I Love You Truly. It questions whether there is such a thing as love at first sight. It explores in words, music, song and moving images the on-off-on-off relationship of a young woman and a young man as they slowly begin to discover more and more things about each other and experience true love for the first time. Above all, it is the story of two exceptional people discovering and building trust and finding a soul mate who will share their lives forever.

I LOVE YOU TRULY – THE MEDIUM-LENGTH SYNOPSIS

The story of two young people – a woman from Boston, Massachusetts and a  man from Scotland based in London, England – as they strive to discover and build trust in their quest for the perfect life-partner. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony.  Neither condition is immune from the other because love doesn’t bring and never has brought total happiness. On the contrary, it’s a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield, sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we’re doing the right thing. It is an abiding Christian faith

which, from the very beginning, guides and comforts them on their heart-breaking journey.

I LOVE YOU TRULY – THE BRIEF SYNOPSIS

The story of two young people – a woman from Boston, Massachusetts and a man from Scotland based in London, England – as they strive to discover and build trust in their quest for the perfect life-partner. It is an abiding Christian faith which, from the very beginning, guides and comforts them on their heart-breaking journey.

I LOVE YOU TRULY – THE LOGLINE

The story of two young people discovering and building trust and finding a soul mate they hope will be with them forever.

I LOVE YOU TRULY – THE TAGLINE

When you truly love someone, you can’t just be their friend.

I LOVE YOU TRULY – THE CHARACTER BACKGROUNDS

THE YOUNG WOMAN

The Young Woman is an American actress based in Buckinghamshire, just outside London. She grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, and moved to England at 18 when she attended drama school in Manchester for three years. She has performed in many theatre productions including the fantasy drama Tom”s Midnight Garden and Shakespeare”s Cymbeline and the Noel Coward comedy Hay Fever, in which she played the female lead of Sorel Bliss. As a drama student she had a small role in the long-running TV soup, Coronation Street. Moving to England gave her a whole new perspective on life, not only on America and Britain but on the world itself. “This, for me, has been an extraordinary thing,” she told the Young Man early in their relationship. She loves how “laid back and calm” life is in England. To supplement her income from television and theatre jobs she and her fellow-actress flatmate run a company called Parties for Ever which provides themed fun events for children aged from two to 16. She is vibrant and fun-loving on the surface but beneath her bright exterior lurks a more serious, deeper person who constantly questions her very existence. She has been unlucky in love once too often and it has cultivated in her a nagging, prolonged neurosis and insecurity. Along the way, she has fully embraced English country living: riding horses and drinking ale. She is considering taking British citizenship. England is where she believes she belongs. She wonders if he will ever find true love.

THE YOUNG MAN

  The Young Man, a London-based Scot, is a rising star at a swish London advertising agency. He is also a head-in-the-clouds romantic with a love of Byron and Wordsworth. When not working on major new ad campaigns he has a penchant for penning melancholic verse in the style of Keats, Shelley and his other poet heroes, poems which are the voice of the heart of his heart. The Young Woman, when their relationship deepens, becomes the recipient of a steady flow of his poetic outpourings. He has a particular liking for the love poem “The Life That I Have”, by Leo Marks, which was used in the film classic Carve Hr Name With Pride, which he saw at the British Film Institute. He fell in love with the poem after hearing it read in the film by Virginia McKenna. He is a passionate supporter of Queens Park Rangers football club – whose Loftus Road stadium is situated just round the corner from his home in West London – and a fan of Radiohead. He plays the English band”s ninth studio album, A Moon Shaped Pool, continuously on his car”s CD player which drives the Young Woman to distraction. He has not been in a serious relationship for five years. He wonders if he will ever find true love.

THE PRIEST

 The priest is a family friend of the Young Man. He officiated at the weddings of the Young Man”s two elder sisters. The priest will eventually conduct another significantly important wedding ceremony. He radiates a happy, upbeat, somewhat sardonic personality: to him, being a man of the church does not equate with being a man of somber, emotionless bearing. He enjoys a good joke and a pint of beer.

THE STORYTELLER

 The Storyteller is heard but not seen. He is the mature, all-knowing voice of experience and wisdom, a God-like figure. He has the capacity of verbalizing and rationalizing problems which the Young Woman and the Young Man will experience along the pathway of their journey. He is creative for them. Everything he says about them is reliable information. Truer than their feelings, thoughts and perception, the Storyteller is totally accurate and honest in what he says. Every promise and conclusion he makes to and about the Young Woman and the Young Man can be fully counted on: he means it. They can take him at his word. His wisdom is unlimited. He understands all the elements of a situation, including the history of their relationship and future events that will almost certainly be related to it.

I LOVE YOU TRULY – THE DIRECTOR

IAN WOODWARD

The director, writer and creator of I Love You Truly, was born in Brecon, North Wales, and was formerly a show business correspondent with a speciality in in-depth interviews with big-name international stars of stage and screen. He appeared regularly on the BBC as presenter of Radio 2’s Jazz in Britain from the stage of London’s Camden Theatre (from where The Goon Show with Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, Michael Bentine and Spike Milligan was broadcast some three decades before Ian Woodward set foot on the same stage). He was Arts contributor to Radio 4”s Woman’s Hour, among other BBC shows.

He is married, with two children, Philip and Stefanie, and three grandchildren, Eva, Anna and Joe. Eva appears briefly as the Child of Hope in Too Many Ghosts , the filmmaker’s award-winning commentary on the folly of military conflict set at the end of World War Two and starring Petros Koukoulomatis with David Sutherland, Mandy Carr and Eva Woodward. Too Many Ghosts, narrated by Beth Mayoh,  has been screened in 25 countries, spanning Canada and South Korea, Australia and Russia and all across Europe, East and West, including one showing at the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz and 13 showings at the cinema of Britain’s famous Imperial War Museum in London. It was given the Best Director award at the International Historical Film Festival in Bulgaria and at Italy’s renowned International “A Film for Peace” Festival in Trieste it received the following citation: “The artistic direction grants Too Many Ghosts the Special Mention award for having addressed important issues regarding human rights and the right to peace.”

He is the author of more than 30 books (including volumes of verse), which have been translated into German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Indonesian, Arabic and Japanese. His books include Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen (a worldwide best-seller and never out of print since first published in 1984; the Japanese edition hit 1st place in the country’s top booksellers lists; the 1993 Virgin paperback is now in its 19th printing; the title was released as an eBook in 2012 and is available worldwide on Amazon); The Werewolf Delusion; Glenda Jackson: A Study in Fire and Ice; The Story of Clowns; Dance (with an introduction by TV”s former Strictly Come Dancing judge and theatre director Arlene Phillips); The Grand Music Themes; Birds in the Garden; Lives of the Great Composers (two volumes); Spotlight on Ballet (foreword by choreographer and former Royal Ballet star and English National Ballet artistic director Wayne Eagling); and the best-seller One Hundred Favourite Poems.

Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen spawned the tribute musical Fair Lady of the Screen, composed by former Bee Gees keyboardist Rudi Dobson. The musical was released on CD (below left) by President Records with an accompanying book written by Ian Woodward.

A single from the Fair Lady of the Screen album was later released with Clive Waite singing Rudi’s arrangement of the Henri Mancini classic Moon River, originally sung by Audrey Hepburn”s guitar-strumming Holly Golightly on the fire escape outside her apartment in Manhattan’s Upper East Side in the multi-Oscar-winning Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The legendary Italian-American composer, conductor and arranger Henri Mancini, of Pink Panther, Love Story and Romeo and Juliet themes fame, personally approved Rudi’s idiosyncratic hit version of Moon River. “He loved it,” says Rudi.

Ian Woodward’s interests outside writing and filmmaking embrace music and natural history. For a period, before being waylaid by more pressing distractions, he studied composition (harmony and counterpoint) and piano (under opera star and Proms favourite Josephine Nendick) at the Watford School of Music and Drama. His other interests include Tudor and Elizabethan history, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, the lives of Jesus Christ and the patriot-martyrs Joan of Arc and Sir Thomas More.

He has been a keen naturalist since childhood. He has a particular interest in ornithology and has undertaken many scientific research projects in recognition of which he was elected an honorary Member of the British Ornithologists’ Union (MBOU) and the American Ornithologists’ Union (MAOU) and made a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London (FZS). He passionately supports and actively participates in the work of the RSPB, the research organization British Trust for Ornithology and the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust.

His last seven films – I’ll Walk with God, Adoration: A Natural History, Love Song: The Triumph and Tragedy of Tchaikovsky , The Red Rose, Too Many Ghosts, Silly Robin and From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields – have won major awards at international film festivals and been screened in 40 countries worldwide, from the United Kingdom to Canada and the United States, from Australia, South Korea, Russia and Belarus and across Europe to Germany,  Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, the Ukraine, Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Armenia, Slovenia, Estonia, Portugal, Macedonia, Austria, Malta, Slovakia, Serbia and the Czech Republic.

He lives with his wife near London in the historical village of Kings Langley, birthplace of England’s only Pope and former seat of the Plantagenet kings of England. King Richard II was buried in Kings Langley in 1400 before King Henry V had his remains moved to Westminster Abbey in London. Both kings are the subject of two of Shakespeare’s best-loved plays: Henry V and Richard II. Former US President Jimmy Carter”s ancestors came from Kings Langley.

He is currently in pre-production with My Dearest Beating Heart, set in Regency England. The film, which opens in 1795 near Grasmere, in Cumbria, is a biopic drama about the relationship of England’s Poet Laureate, William Wordsworth (“I wandered lonely as a cloud…”) with his sister Dorothy. It features other real-life historical characters including Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”), Sir Walter Scott (Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, etc), and Napoleon Bonaparte. The film will shoot in England’s scenically stunning Lake District in the summer of 2017.

I LOVE YOU TRULY – THE PRE-FILM REVIEWS

Reviews for some earlier films from writer-director Ian Woodward:

SACRED! MUSIC FROM THE HEART

(2017)

 “A hugely inspirational film. Congratulations to English filmmaker Ian Woodward and his actors, choir and crew who contributed to the making of this hugely uplifting film. This festival was proud to showcase it as a world premiere.” (The Christian Film Festival, Virginia, USA).

I’LL WALK WITH GOD

(2016)

 “This is a great work of cinematic art” (The Classical Arts Film Festival, Napa, California). “I’ll Walk with God has great acting, great drama, great music, poignant romance, and is family friendly. The film states up front that it is a musical romance and, boy, does it deliver! We have been so blessed to have I’ll Walk with God in our film festival. Thank you to everyone who helped to make it happen. This film is awesome!” (The Christian Film Festival, Virginia, USA).

ADORATION: A NATURAL HISTORY

(2015)

 “Congratulations to Adoration: A Natural History for winning the prestigious Award of Merit at the Christian Life International Film Festival. This exciting wildlife docudrama features an exceptional storyline, locations, visuals and sound along with fine acting by Kim May in the role of Nature Woman. In receiving the Award of Merit, Encore Films and director Ian Woodward have joined the exulted ranks of previous high-profile winners of this internationally respected award.  Being honoured with the Award of Merit means that the craft and skill exhibited in Adoration: A Natural History is outstanding and stands above other productions in the competition.” (The Christian Life International Film Festival, Ontario, Canada.)

LOVE SONG: THE TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY OF TCHAIKOVSKY

(2014)

 “This movie is a masterpiece.” (The Golden Diana International Film Festival, Austria).

THE RED ROSE

(2013)

“Ian Woodward is no stranger to our festival, having previously won the Best Movie of the Festival award for his emotionally-charged film From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields, submitting this year a colourful fantasy called The Red Rose. He has thrown every trick in the book at this one and, accordingly, was judged the Best Film in the festival’s General Section.” (The Melbourne International Movie Festival, Australia).

SILLY ROBIN

 (2012 )

 “The movie Silly Robin was the rightful recipient of the prestigious Bronze Camera 300 Award as testified by the fact that it attracted so much delighted attention from the festival audience. (FADF “Camera 300” Festival, Bitola, Macedonia).

TOO MANY GHOSTS

(2011)

 “Congratulations to Too Many Ghosts on receiving its London and UK premiere last Monday, 5 December, at the 11th Annual Imperial War Museum Film Festival. That’s a fantastic success. The fact that it is being shown at the Imperial War Museum no less than 13 times is a real honour. More remarkably is the fact that on the very day that German chancellor Angela Merkel was seen on worldwide TV laying a wreath at a ceremony in Berlin to commemorate the closing of the Nazi death-camp Auschwitz, Too Many Ghosts was being screened at the Imperial War Museum in London and at Auschwitz in Poland to commemorate the very same thing.” (The War Poetry Website.)

FROM BOHEMIA’S WOODS AND FIELDS

(2011)

 “This stunning film depicts the natural, vast woods and fields of Bohemia with inventive use of light in a perfect harmony – the jury was unanimous in awarding the film the Best Cinematography prize.” (The Seoul International Film Festival, South Career).