"He Loves and She Loves": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"He Loves and She Loves"

Deena Rosenberg
Fascinating Rhythm: The Collaboration of George and Ira Gershwin,
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991, 1997
(soft cover Ed.)

"He Loves and She Loves" was not included in the scorefor Funny Face (originally titled Smarty) when it first previewed at the Shubert Theater in Philadelphia on October 11, 1927. The song wasn't introduced until one of the the later previews in Atlantic City during the week of November 7-12, 1927. There it was sung as a duet by Adele Astaire as Frankie and Allan Kearns as Jimmy. Other previews took place in Washington DC, and Wilmington, Delaware before Funny Face opened on Broadway on November 22, 1927, for a run of 244 performances. This number came close to matching the Gershwins' previous hit, Oh, Kay! (256 performances) in 1926, but could not approach equalling (just to show the competition of the era) contemporaneous shows like A Connecticut Yankee with score by Rodgers and Hart, Vincent Youmans' Hit the Deck or Show Boat with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II that ran for 572 performances -- not to mention several other shows of that year with even longer runs. Funny Face also had a London run of 267 opening on Nov. 8, 1928, with a mostly new cast, except for Fred and Adele Astaire whose popularity in Britain was a ready boost to ticket sales. Oddly, "He Loves and She Loves," which Howard Pollack calls "one of Gershwin's most glorious melodies" was cut from the British production, replaced by a song we no longer remember. It was, however, reintroduced when the show toured Australia. There is a studio recording of "He Loves and She Loves" featuring Adele Astaire singing it with Bernard Clifton (who played Jimmy in the British cast) accompanied by George Gershwin on piano.

The Broadway version of Funny Face was produced by Alex Aarons and Vinton Friedly, for their new theater on West 52nd Street, the Alvin, a name created from the first syllables of their first names: "Al" + "Vin." (As of 1983, The Alvin was renamed the Neil Simon Theater.) Aarons and Friedly also produced the Gershwins' three previous hit shows Lady, Be Good! (1924), Tip-Toes (1925) and Oh, Kay! (1926), some of the profits from which went into building the new house. The bookfor Funny Face was written by Fred Thompson and Paul Gerard Smith, the latter replacing Robert Benchley the very popular New Yorker writer, theater critic and humorist.

The rather extended period of previews for Funny Face (six weeks worth) noted above was due in part to the show being fraught with problems including the departure under pressure of Benchley. When the producers brought the famous man on board his reputation made them smell success but the book he and Thompson crafted out of a scenario created by Thompson and Guy Bolton proved unwieldy and Benchley bowed out with the partly self-critical comment, "Gosh, how can I criticize other people's shows if I had anything to do with this?" (The Gershwins, p. 80). George Gershwin biographer Edward Jablonski reports that to Ira Gershwin "the show's pre-New York version "looked like a failure." Ira went on to say that during that period of previews there was an enormous amount of "recasting, rewriting, rehearsing, [and] recriminating -- [but] of rejoicing there was none." Jablonksi writes that Fred Astaire called that time "Agony," and that the entire show and score got redone and some of the cast members replaced. Coincidentally, Richard Rodgers was in Philadelphia for the try-outs of his and Lorenz Hart's show A Connecticut Yankee and caught a preview of the Gershwin show. Rodgers wrote of that show in a letter to Dorothy Feiner, his future wife, "God will have to do miracles if it's going to be fixed" (Katherine Riley, The Astaires: Fred & Adele, p. 112). More importantly in the long run Allan Kearns came in for Stanley Ridges to play opposite Adele Astarie and therefore wound up performing "He Loves and She Loves" with her, and the comic actors Victor Moore and Earl Hampton were added, quite successfully, to play the jewel thieves.. Jablonski comments that although the producers finally saw some things they liked, the book remained "a piece of fluff about jewel robbery" involving an aviator, an attempt to cash in on all the current fuss about Lindbergh. Adele Astaire played her usual "charming ingenue" role while Fred was her "foster-brother" and "suffering guardian.

Astonishingly, under the pressure of the producers' axe, a flood of 24 songs emanated from the Gershwins for Smarty/Funny Face of which eleven fell by the wayside by the time the troubled previews were over -- though several of these, including "How Long Has This Been Going On?" survived to appear in later shows, and, in its case, go on to become a standard. More than one commentator has noted that "He Loves and She Loves" found its way into the Funny Face score as a replacement for "How Long Has This Been Going On" for a variety of reasons: Deena Rosenberg has suggested that "He Loves, She Loves" was lighter compared to "the darkly sensuous" "How Long Has This Been Going On" (p. 155, paperback Ed.) -- "dark and sensuous" not necessarily being good for ticket sales. Similarly, Philip Furia notes the new addition had "a melody more in [Allan] Kearns vocal range and a simpler lyric that, as Ira put it, 'managed to get over' to the out-of town audience" (Furia, p. 65). Perhaps the last straw of the taxing preview period came when, upon departing Wilmington, George, thinking the show was ready for Broadway and they could return to New York with feelings of relief, discovered he had lost his tune book containing forty as yet unused songs. After a frantic but unsuccessful attempt to recover it, he expressed a form of self-confident resignation reserved for geniuses, and optimistic ones at that, suggesting there were more where those came from (Jablonski, pp. 144-145). He was right, of course. Still, wouldn't it be nice to stumble across that notebook in some Wilmington flea market.

The reviews of Funny Face contained some common strains: the book was eminently forgettable, the Gershwin songs were an asset (an estimate that with hindsight would now certainly seem an understatement), but the key element for the show's eventual success would be the dancing of the Astaires. Jablonski quotes a couple of the better known critics as follows:

George Jean Nathan spoke for most when he wrote in Judge magazine that "the Astaire team lifts the evening as they lifted equally dubious vehicles and sends the show gaily over. If there are better dancers anywhere I must have been laid up with old war wounds when they displayed themselves." Alexander Woollcott underscored the Astaire-Gershwin affinity with "I don't know whether George Gershwin was born into this world to write rhythms for Fred Astaire's feet or whether Fred Astaire was born into this world to show how the Gershwin music should really be danced" (p. 145, hardcover Ed.) .

They are a sort of champagne cup of motion, those Astaires. They live, laugh and leap in a world that is all bubbles. They are sleek, long-shanked, blissfully graceful, both of them. Their dance steps flash and quiver with an intricacy which declines to be taken seriously but which is none the less a maker of marvels ( The Astaires: Fred & Adele New York: Oxford UP, 2012, p. 111).

The delayed entrance of "He Loved and She Loved" into the score for Funny Face) didn't come about until the previews in Atlantic City. Looking for more material to bolster the show, the Gershwins were fiddling around, as they often did, with one of George's early songs,"Something About Love," that had a "perky" melody, a lyric by Lou Paley (one of George's co-writers from a time before George and Ira were working together regularly) and that was first used in the little remembered 1919 production The Lady in Red and later in Lady, Be Good, neither time making much of a mark. Jablonski explains that Paley's lyric reflected his background as a grammar school teacher by including the conjugation for the singular of the verb "love" in the present tense and indicative mood, with "and" separating the steps: "I love (and) you love (and) he loves (and) she loves." The always proper Ira contacted Paley for permission to adapt a small slice of his lyric, which Paley was glad to do. The result was a new song for Funny Face, "He Loves and She Loves," derived from slivers of an old one. Despite their spectacularly fecund capacity to create songs from scratch, this going back into theirtrunkto retrieve unused or slightly used material was not a rare way of working for the Gershwins (Jablonski, p. 146-147) who were professional songwriters for the theater with a primary motive of coming up with the best material for their current theatrical project.

George Gershwin's and Lew Paley's song "Something About Love" (1919) is performed by Brad Kaye and Those Syncopating Songbirds in 2009. The earlier song included bits and pieces both musically and lyrically, that wound up in George and Ira's "He Loves and She Loves." This rendition demonstrates how much the song's "perky" nature had changed by 1927. The character of "He Loves and She Loves is best described by George's direction marked on its sheet music: "Slowly with Sentiment." "'S Wonderful" gets performed by Adele Astaire playing Frankie and Allan Kearns playing Peter Thurston. Frankie is one of three sisters under the guardianship of Jimmy Reeves (Fred Astaire) whose wealthy parents have taken the girls into their household. Peter Thurston is a house guest and famous aviator. Frankie has written down in her diary some lies about her guardian Jimmy --lying being one of her less charming habits. The diary has gotten locked up in Jimmy's safe and in order to retrieve it, she has enlisted Thurston's help. As they make their plans, they begin to fall in love and sing "He Loves and She Loves." Later in the show, during te second act, Frankie and Peter sing "'S Wonderful" to each other as their romance progresses. Jimmy's (Fred's) Love interest is another of the sisters, June, played by Gertrude McDonald, to whom he sings "My One and Only" (titled in the show as "What Am I Going to Do?"). This was Fred's crack at both singing and dancing one of the several songs from Funny Face that would turn out to be a standard. It's interesting to note that although Fred and Adele are the shows stars (as they have been and will be in many shows), being sister and brother in real life, they never play opposite one another as a romantic couple.Adele and Fred do get to sing and dance together in the show on the famously satirical number "The Babbitt and the Bromide." The song mocks the shallowness of a clichéd age as did Sinclair Lewis in his 1922 novel Babbitt and humorist Gelett Burgess in his 1906 lampoon of "tiresome bores," Are You a Bromide? (Howard Pollack, George Gershwin: His Life and Work, p. 411). There is no known video of Fred and Adele singing and dancing the "The Babbitt and the Bromide" but you may recognize Fred's dancing partner in the clip below -- even though Fred feigns not to.
Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly sing and dance "The Babbitt and the Bromide" (music by George Gershwin, words by Ira Gershwin originally from the 1927 show Funny Face) in the 1946 movie Ziegfeld Follies. The Offspring of Funny Face
Fred Astaire sings "He Loves and She Loves" to Audrey Hepburn in the 1957 movie Funny Face. As described above, Fred also appeared in the 1927 Broadway show of the same title co-starring with his sister Adele, but as the real life siblings never played romantic roles opposite one another, she sang "He Loves and She Loves" with Allan Kearns. The movie Funny Face, other than using four songs from the Broadway production and featuring one of its stars (Fred) otherwise bears no resemblance to the original show. The four songs were the title song "Funny Face," "Let's Kiss and Make Up," "He Loves and She Loves," and "'S Wonderful." In the movie, the first three are sung as solos by Fred, the last as a duet by him and Audrey Hepburn. A fifth song written for the original Broadway Funny Face, but never used in it, "How Long Has This Been Going On," became a solo in the movie for Miss Hepburn. Finally, "Clap Yo' Hands" written by the Gershwins for their 1926 show Oh, Kay! was sung and danced to in the movie by Fred and Kay Thomson (Pollack, p. 414). Another production derived from the show Funny Face, in which "He Loves and She Loves" was used, bears the title of one of the original Funny Face songs: "My One and Only." For commentary on the 1983 Broadway hit show My One and Only, consult the song's Cafe Songbook page.

The Complete Lyrics Of Cole Porter Robert Kimball, Ed. (with an Intro. by John Updike), New York: Alfred A Knoph, 1983 (Da Capo Press paperback Ed., 1992, shown).

"He Loves and She Loves" consists of two verses, one preceding the refrainand the other coming after it. In the first verse, the lyric's thesis is established: that for "the human race" happiness derives from love itself, or, more specifically, from loving "that wondrous thing they call love" -- and as the refrain's conjugation of "love" makes clear, everybody participates: "He Loves, and she loves and they love," a line sung by Peter (Alan Kearns) and responded to by Frankie (Adele Astaire) who extends the loving beyond humans to "Birds love and bees love and whispering trees love," leading to her conclusion: "And that's what we both should do."

In some ways the Gershwin song is lyrically a precursor of Cole Porter's Let's Do it" from the next year, 1928, in which Porter lists eight separate species of birds doing it as well as bee's and "educated flees." For Porter, the antecedent of "it" is literally "fall in love," but quite clearly he suggests more in his catalog of witty examples and unmistakable sexual innuendos. His double entendres, emanating from both "do" and "it," are inescapable. For Ira, at least in "He Loves and She Loves," a cigar is only a cigar. He's not a lyrical prude, acknowledging that in some songs, he intends something more, but neither is he fond of being over interpreted. He makes a special effort to disabuse anyone who reads too much into his 1926 "Do, do do, / What you've done, done, done / Before, Baby," in which what is done, he insists, is nothing more than a kiss. "He Loves and She Loves" is even less susceptible to a reading evoking more serious carnality. (JAC)

Click here to read the lyrics for "He Loves and She Loves" as sung by Ella Fitzgerald on the album The George and Ira Gershwin Songbook, as well as for how it was sung originally by Adele Astaire (as Frankie) and Allan Kearns (as Peter) in the 1927 Broadway show
Funny Face, for which it was written.

Oh Lady Be Good: Best of the Gershwin Songbook contains her 1959 studio version with Nelson Riddle arrangement -- as do all her other albums with tracks of "He Loves and She Loves.")

• Stacey Kent: sdlim8
• Audra McDonald: starryeyedboi
• Leslie Hutchinson: tmmvds
• Charlie Byrd: Gab Martins
• Something About Love: metaphorce42
• Fred Astarie and Gene Kelly "The Babbitt and the Bromide": marus815

Notes

• The Gershwins Robert Kimball and Alfred Simon, Ed.s, New York: Atheneum, 1973
• Edward Jablonski Gershwin A Biography, New York: Doubleday, 1987 (paper bound edition shown)
• Other songs written for Funny Face currently included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook :
• 1. How Long Has This Been Going On? (not used in Broadway production of Funny Face)
• 2. My One and Only (What Am I Gonna do?)
• For a complete listing of songs used in the original Broadway production of this show, see IBDB song list .
• George Gershwin: His Life and Work Berkeley: Univ. of California Press 2006
• Philip Furia Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 1996
• Kathleen Riley The Astaires: Fred & Adele New York: Oxford UP, 2012
• Kathleen Riley quotes the New York Sun review of Funny Face from Novemeber 23, 1927, the day after the Broadway opening:
• For the published lyric, see The Complete Lyrics of Ira Gershwin :

Cite this page: "He Loves and She Loves": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/h/he_loves_and_she_loves.html