Happy Valentine’s Day, Lovers!
This is either the happiest day or the saddest day of the year, depending upon the state of your love life. As a happily married man, I’ve enjoyed a permanent valentine for twenty years and we tend to celebrate any old time we please. It works out well.
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart
As music lovers, my valentine and I are both great fans of the Great American Songbook standard “My Funny Valentine” — a show tune from the 1937 Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart musical “Babes in Arms.”
I’m sure you’ve heard it. This popular jazz standard has appeared on over 1300 albums performed by over 600 artists. It’s even been performed on “American Idol,” so even the Gen-X, Y or Z kids should know it.
Whether your favorite version is traditional (like Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra) or jazzy (like Miles Davis or Chet Baker), you can probably find a version to suit your mood.
Name your favorite performer, and chances are, you’ll find a recording of this song. Michael Bublé? Too easy. Jerry Garcia? Believe it or not — YES.
The perennial song was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Of course the music is absolutely beautiful, but the lyrics make this the ultimate valentine song.
Lorenz Hart (Larry, to those in the know) was called THE AMERICAN TOULOUSE-LAUTREC. Like that tormented French artist, Hart was a dwarf, ugly, alcoholic and sexually conflicted.
Hart was born in New York City on May 2, 1895 and died there November 22, 1943, a victim of his excesses and his disappointments. He was a well-educated bon-vivant of 24 when he was introduced to teen-age composing prodigy Richard Rodgers, a precocious 17-year-old. Both studied at Columbia University, and Hart lived with his parents, earning money by translating German operettas and plays for the Shubert brothers to present at their theaters. They hit it off right away, and that first meeting was probably the best they ever got along.
Hart was a difficult person to deal with, but apparently Rodgers wasn’t exactly a saint, either.
The had an early success, getting one song — “Any Old Place With You” — accepted for the 1919 Broadway musical comedy A LONELY ROMEO. But then it was five years of frustration and rejection. The pair worked for free or for peanuts doing undergraduate musical reviews for Columbia, hoping some talent scouts would pluck them out and take them to stardom. Rodgers was on the brink of giving up when they had the song “Manhattan” accepted by the Theater Guild for1925’s “The Garrick Gaieties” — an annual music review presented one night to raise funds for the theater (in this case, for new curtains.)
It was the smash hit of the show and the team were off and running. The show was extended for several weeks.
Years later, the pair were back at the theater and Rodgers said, “Isn’t it strange, Larry? We are responsible for those curtains.”
Hart said, “No, Dick. Those curtains are responsible for us.”
Broadway was a different place then. At their peak, R&H (as they were known) wrote an average of four new shows a year Their most prolific year was 1926, when the team produced 60 songs for six shows.
Rodgers was legendary for the speed with which he could write a score — and the high quality of his music. Hart didn’t dawdle over his lyrics either — when he bothered to write.
Rodgers became a stern master, hunting down Hart and at times locking him into a room until he produced witty rhymes. Hart might disappear for days — or longer — on alcoholic benders and return much the worse for wear. But then he could grab the nearest cocktail napkin and dash off a complete song lyric without revision.
Hart was a tortured artist and it showed in his writing. He could pour out flowery schmaltz like “With A Song In My Heart,” but he really shined when exercising his cynicism.
It was the 1920s and Hart had to keep his homosexuality in the closet. Worse, he was obsessed with the leading ladies in his productions — especially tall and willowy sopranos. He actually proposed marriage to one — and she was flabbergasted. They had never so much as kissed. Mostly, the women were amused by him. Many wouldl pat him on the head like a little boy — which hurt even more.
He did make a funny figure. He was somewhere short of five feet tall (although he wore lifts in his shoes), his head was mis-shapen and prematurely bald. His beard was so heavy that he had to shave twice a day. Most contemporary accounts call him a gnome.TIME Magazine called him “the Rumplelstiltskin of the Upper West Side”.
He tried to make up for his appearance by dressing like a dandy. His shirts were custom made and he wore the best suits. However, Hart had a predilection for rough sex, and would often pick up low-class working men in waterfront bars who would beat him up. He might show up for rehearsals bloody and bruised, his clothing ripped, after a weekend absence.
The torment he felt and the pain, disgrace and humiliation he suffered fed some of his best lyrics. You can hear the acid dripping from the words of songs like “Falling in Love With Love,” “To Keep My Love Alive,” “I Wish I Were In Love Again,” and “Everything I’ve Got Belongs To You.”
If he can be said to have matured, his lyrics took on a wistful acceptance, as in “It Never Entered My Mind,” and “I Didn’t Know What TIme It Was.”
Larry’s sexual misadventures and substance-fueled binges were an open secret on Broadway, but in that era, the press kept such stories from the public. But you could read between the lines. TIME described him in the year before his death as “cigar-chewing Hart, the pint-sized genie with a two-quart capacity.”
Is it a curiosity that such a loser at love should pen the best known valentine song in history?
In the rarely-performed verse, (the song was originally sung by a woman to her male lover) it starts out with a mocking tone — probably with words aimed at the author himself by some unattainable dream girl:
Behold the way our fine feathered friend,
His virtue doth parade
Thou knowest not, my dim-witted friend
The picture thou hast made
Thy vacant brow, and thy tousled hair
Conceal thy good intent
Thou noble upright truthful sincere,
And slightly dopey gent
And then the lush refrain starts, and it turns into the tenderest of love ballads — acceptance of the less-than-perfect mate.
You’re ….
My funny Valentine
Sweet comic Valentine
You make me smile with my heart
Your looks are laughable, unphotographable
Yet you’re my favorite work of art
Is your figure less than Greek?
Is your mouth a little weak?
When you open it to speak, are you smart?
But don’t change a hair for me
Not if you care for me
Stay little Valentine, stay
Each day is Valentine’s Day
If you’ve ever had this song sung to you, you can’t help but fall deeply in love.
In the business called “Show” there is a lot of room for interpretation (as Jerry Garcia demonstrates in his psychadelic version of this ballad). In fact, this song can be downright hilarious in the hands … er, um … vocal cords … of a clueless singer. Think American Idol. Think any of the Lounge Lizard satires on Saturday Night Live
More than one interpreter punctuates the line “Your looks are laughable”, with a wildly misplace “ha! ha! ha!” just in case the audience doesn’t get it.
Talk about spoiling the mood!
Another common gaffe is “Don’t change YOUR hair for me.” Maybe we should thank Billy Joel for that one — from “Just The Way You Are.”
“Don’t go trying some new fashion. Don’t change the color of your hair. ”
No wonder people get confused, eh?
I think the version that made the biggest impression on me (Other than Ella’s — you can’t beat Ella) is during the movie “Sharky’s Machine” (1981) starring and directed by Burt Reynolds. Burt is a cop keeping a hooker under surveillance, and as he spies on her through binoculars he begins to have “feelings” for her. The movie’s montage of Burt being a voyeur and becoming enchanted with the high-priced “escort” is scored to sultry Julie London singing our featured tune (this was London’s last recording). Be warned — Burt sings along! When the prostitute is blown away by a shotgun blast, Burt (and the audience) are devastated — thanks mainly to the mood cultivated by our valentine song.
I highly recommend that you spend this Valentine’s Day surfing Youtube for every version of the song you can find. Let it soak in to you. Listen with someone you love.
And — don’t change a hair for me.
WADE
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