The Lady in Red is a 1935 song with lyrics by Mort Dixon and music by Allie Wrubel. Its title makes reference to the then well-known nickname of Ana Cumpănaș, the notorious "lady in red" who was believed to have betrayed gangster John Dillinger to the FBI in July of the previous year. The song is written in a quasi-Latin rhumba style.
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In Caliente
"The Lady in Red" is featured in the soundtrack of the 1935 film In Caliente. In the film, the song is the subject of an elaborate staging by Busby Berkeley in the dimly lit title nightclub. Soloist Wini Shaw lights a series of candles as she sings the lyric, the "Dancing DeMarcos" (Tony and Sally) perform a specialty dance, and comic singer Judy Canova uses the chorus to come on to Edward Everett Horton in her customary aggressively rural yodeling style.
Merrie Melodies
The song was (as was customary at the time) promoted by Warner through a Merrie Melodies cartoon entry, "The Lady in Red." Merrie Melodies composer/arranger Carl Stalling made use of the tune again in a 1937 Porky Pig cartoon, "Picador Porky," which like "The Lady In Red" was set in Mexico and which additionally included the title tune from In Caliente.
The song took on a life of its own, becoming a staple of Warner Bros. cartoons, as Stalling would include it in the underscore anytime a female character would appear in a red outfit (such as the raucous, red-hooded Bobby soxer in "Little Red Riding Rabbit"), leading to the joke among the Warners animation staff, "Don't draw anything with a red pencil, or Stalling will give us 'The Lady In Red' again." Bugs Bunny sang a few bars of the song (changing the lyric to "the rabbit in red") in 1949's "The Windblown Hare."