Published 1925 | ||
Writer(s) Lyricist: Lorenz Hart
Composer: Richard Rodgers | ||
"Manhattan" is a popular song and part of the Great American Songbook. It has been performed by The Supremes, Lee Wiley, Oscar Peterson, Blossom Dearie, Tony Martin, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Torme, among many others. It is often known as "We'll Have Manhattan" based on the opening line. The music was written by Richard Rodgers and the words by Lorenz Hart for the 1925 revue "Garrick Gaieties". It was introduced by Sterling Holloway (later the voice of the animated Winnie the Pooh) and June Cochran.
Contents
Lyrics and story
The song appears to describe, in several choruses, the simple delights of Manhattan for a young couple in love who are blissfully unaware of their surroundings. The joke is that these "delights" are really some of the worst, or at best cheap, delights that New York has to offer; for example, the stifling, humid stench of the subway in summertime is described as "balmy breezes", while the noisy, grating pushcarts on Mott Street are "gently gliding by". A particular Hart delight is the rhyming "spoil" with "boy and goyl".
In the lyrics' first stanza, the couple is obviously too poor to afford a honeymoon to the popular summertime destinations of "Niag'ra" or "other places", so they claim to be happy to "save our fares".
In the second stanza, they settle for a walk down Delancey Street, which was in the 1920s a boisterous commercial strip, part of the working-class Lower East Side. In the third stanza, they plan to go to Greenwich, to watch "Modern men itch to be free". In the fourth stanza, it is revealed that the only rural retreat they can afford to go to is "Yonkers", and the only restaurant they can afford to go to is where they will "starve together in Childs'" – a popular discount cafeteria. These were all working-class places that attracted the poor, the unemployed, and gays and lesbians, along with other denizens of the Prohibition-era demimonde.
In later stanzas, other places they will go to are likewise free – Central Park, "the Bronnix Park Express", Coney Island, Brighton Beach, and to view the much-criticized statue of "Civic Virtue". In sum, this poor young couple in love can only afford the cheapest places to visit and the dreariest experiences that New York City can afford, and it is not clear they understand their predicament, so the joke's on them.
Versions
Since its debut, it has regularly appeared in popular culture. It was first heard on the silver screen in the 1929 short Makers Of Melody, a tribute to Rodgers and Hart sung by Ruth Tester and Allan Gould. Since then, it has been used in the Rodgers and Hart biopic Words And Music (1948), Two Tickets To Broadway (1951), Don't Bother To Knock (1952) (sung by Anne Bancroft), Beau James (1957), Silent Movie (1976), Tempest (1982), Mighty Aphrodite (1995), The English Patient (1996), Kissing Jessica Stein (2001) and many other movies and TV shows, most recently in the 2007 AMC production Mad Men episode "New Amsterdam". In the film All About Eve (1950), the song is played on the piano at the party when Margo and Max are in the kitchen.
As times progress, the song's reference to whatever long-running show is popular on Broadway changes with each cover version. The original lyrics reference Abie's Irish Rose, which ran on Broadway from 1922 to 1927. The Ella Fitzgerald rendition from 1956 mentions My Fair Lady, as does Dinah Washington's 1959 recording, while Rosemary Clooney references South Pacific.
In the early and mid-1950s, singer Julius La Rosa became a national celebrity for his exposure on several of the shows hosted by one of the most popular television stars of the era, Arthur Godfrey. On October 19, 1953, La Rosa sang "Manhattan" on one of Godfrey's radio shows. Immediately after he finished, Godfrey fired him on the air, saying, "that was Julie's swan song with us".