If my choir is performing a song from a film or play I always like to put the piece in context, which often means that I have to wade through summaries of plots that make very little sense. Many if not most musical comedies have plots that are simply frameworks, often flimsy, to hang the song-and-dance numbers on. (It’s okay for me to end that previous sentence with a proposition since one of these song titles does that, too.) Also, sometimes the musical numbers have outlived the production for which they were written and it’s very difficult to get access to the original story.
Such is the case with Something to Shout About, the 1943 film scored by Cole Porter., in which “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To” occurs. I’m finding it very difficult to get an idea of how the song is actually used in the story. I know who sings it and to whom, though, and I’ve managed to get a rough idea of the plot. (Wikipedia was just plain wrong on this one, but luckily they weren’t the only source available.) Turns out it’s one of those “rich backer insists on appearing in a show even though she has no talent” thingies. So at first I thought that it was sung to the rich backer (a wealthy divorcee) by the producer of the show, with the idea that he’d marry her and get her to stay home. (This was 1943, after all.) According to the film’s performance credits, though, the couple involved is a theatrical agent and the talented girl who is ripe for the part that the divorcee has taken on. I could get the movie through Amazon and watch the whole thing, but that’s not on the agenda. So we’ll leave it at that for now.
“They Can’t Take that Away from Me” by George and Ira Gershwin is a different matter, in that its place in the plotline is very clear. Which is not to say that the plots are clear. The song actually appears in two films, Shall We Dance and The Barkleys of Broadway. In SWD, Rogers’ and Astaire’s characters are rumored to be married but really aren’t, and so the idea is that they’ll actually get married so that they can actually get divorced. (Got that?) The occasion of the song is a foggy night crossing on a ferry, as the new bride and groom return back from their quickie wedding and plan for an even-more-quickie parting. Astaire says to Rogers, “I hope you enjoy your divorce.” Of course, we know that they’ll eventually get back together, and they do at the end. Interestingly, the couple doesn’t dance in this scene; Astaire sings to a silent Rogers. Dancing wouldn’t have fit the mood at all, and the constrained setting of the ferry deck isn’t conducive to a dance number. (It would have been interesting, though!) In the film containing the reprise, Rogers and Astaire play a husband-and-wife Broadway dance team with “marital issues” and do a gorgeous performance of “They Can’t Take That.” Barkleys was their tenth and final film together. (SWD was their seventh.) One little nugget I mined was that originally Judy Garland was supposed to play the lead in Barkleys but that her growing dependence on prescription drugs caused her to have so many absences that she was fired and Rogers hired as her replacement. Given the fact that Ginger Rogers was a very touchy, proud person by all accounts, I find it rather astonishing that she agreed to take the part. There was talk that the “elfin” younger Rogers had now become a more “mature, athletic” woman. I don’t know—she looks fine to me! As is widely known, Rogers and Astaire by no means had the same chemistry offscreen that they had on; in fact, they didn’t like each other much. Rogers didn’t like Astaire’s autocratic control of their dances, and he found her difficult to work with. At one point, many years after their last film, he said, “Oh Ginger! She always wanted to be boss.” But he was the master of the dance, planning them out as if he were a military general, mapping out every step on paper and then on a blackboard. Their first film together, Flying Down to Rio in 1933, was such a success that the two were seen from then on as an ongoing duo by RKO Studios, which owned their contracts. Astaire wanted to work with other dancers and Rogers wanted to star in serious drama, but no dice. They were just too popular together. For their last RKO film and next-to-last film in general, a biopic about the dancers Fred and Irene Castle, Astaire tried to get the real Irene Castle (then long past her dancing days) to intervene with the studio and get them to hire someone else. RKO firmly declined her advice.
“They Can’t Take that Away from Me” by George and Ira Gershwin is a different matter, in that its place in the plotline is very clear. Which is not to say that the plots are clear. The song actually appears in two films, Shall We Dance and The Barkleys of Broadway. In SWD, Rogers’ and Astaire’s characters are rumored to be married but really aren’t, and so the idea is that they’ll actually get married so that they can actually get divorced. (Got that?) The occasion of the song is a foggy night crossing on a ferry, as the new bride and groom return back from their quickie wedding and plan for an even-more-quickie parting. Astaire says to Rogers, “I hope you enjoy your divorce.” Of course, we know that they’ll eventually get back together, and they do at the end. Interestingly, the couple doesn’t dance in this scene; Astaire sings to a silent Rogers. Dancing wouldn’t have fit the mood at all, and the constrained setting of the ferry deck isn’t conducive to a dance number. (It would have been interesting, though!) In the film containing the reprise, Rogers and Astaire play a husband-and-wife Broadway dance team with “marital issues” and do a gorgeous performance of “They Can’t Take That.” Barkleys was their tenth and final film together. (SWD was their seventh.) One little nugget I mined was that originally Judy Garland was supposed to play the lead in Barkleys but that her growing dependence on prescription drugs caused her to have so many absences that she was fired and Rogers hired as her replacement. Given the fact that Ginger Rogers was a very touchy, proud person by all accounts, I find it rather astonishing that she agreed to take the part. There was talk that the “elfin” younger Rogers had now become a more “mature, athletic” woman. I don’t know—she looks fine to me! As is widely known, Rogers and Astaire by no means had the same chemistry offscreen that they had on; in fact, they didn’t like each other much. Rogers didn’t like Astaire’s autocratic control of their dances, and he found her difficult to work with. At one point, many years after their last film, he said, “Oh Ginger! She always wanted to be boss.” But he was the master of the dance, planning them out as if he were a military general, mapping out every step on paper and then on a blackboard. Their first film together, Flying Down to Rio in 1933, was such a success that the two were seen from then on as an ongoing duo by RKO Studios, which owned their contracts. Astaire wanted to work with other dancers and Rogers wanted to star in serious drama, but no dice. They were just too popular together. For their last RKO film and next-to-last film in general, a biopic about the dancers Fred and Irene Castle, Astaire tried to get the real Irene Castle (then long past her dancing days) to intervene with the studio and get them to hire someone else. RKO firmly declined her advice.
I’ve been unsuccessful in finding a clip from the movie for “You’d Be So Nice”–but here’s a choral arrangement done by some enthusiastic teens:
Here’s a clip from both films in which “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” appears:
And here’s a choral version of that:
© Debi Simons
