"I Could Write a Book": Song history, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"I Could Write a Book"

Other songs written for the original production of the Broadway show Pal Joey currently included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook:

For a complete listing of songs used in the original production of the show Pal Joey, see the IBDB song list.

Pal Joey opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in New York Dec 25, 1940, and closed Nov 29, 1941. It was staged in London's West End in 1954 and 1980 and has been revived on Broadway in 1952, 1963, 1976 and 2008, as well as in productions at the New York City Center Light Opera Company in 1961 and Encores! in 1995.

Ed. Note: For complete original cast and Broadway revival production details, visit IBDB. For more show details including plot synopsis, view the Wikipedia article.

"I Could Write a Book" was introduced in the original 1940 Broadway production of Pal Joey by Gene Kelly playing Joey Evans, a self-promoting entertainer in a less than classy Chicago nightclub and Leila Ernst playing Linda English an innocent and appealing young stenographer. The scene is set in front of a large picture window looking in on a pet shop. Joey is admiring a puppy in the window when he spies Linda who is doing the same thing. Joey doesn't lose a beat before he is regaling Linda with how he had a puppy just like this one when he was a little boy and how it was killed when the family chauffeur, Chadwick, backed the car over it. Joey continues with the tale seeking to extract every ounce of pity he can from Linda. The audience is intended to see what Linda doesn't, that this is a line and an effective one.It is so effective that Linda is immediately taken with Joey, which leads to them singing, as a duet, the only love ballad in the show."I Could Write a Book."

The premise of the song is that although neither of them did well in school, presumably at least with regard to writing, each now could "write a book / About the way you walk and whisper and look," not to mention "a preface on how we met / So the world would never forget." The romantic innocence expressed in the lyric is a good match for Linda's character but stands in powerfully ironic contrast to Joey's machiavellian approach to love and life.

Close to the end of the show, after Linda has been treated badly by Joey (He pursues and has an affair with an older richer woman, mostly for her money.), she finally wises up to his duplicity and rejects him. In the finale, again in front of the pet shop window, Joey reprises* "I Could Write a Book." He momentarily considers trying to get Linda back but instead exits the stage trailing after another young woman who is passing by, apparently with the idea of using the same line on her. He has learned nothing and his cynicism is emphasized by the irony of the words he sings: "Then the world would soon discover as my book ends / How to make two lovers of friends."

*According to Geoffrey Block, as late as the 1940 Broadway script, this reprise, as important as it is for the show, was not included (Block, Enchanted Evenings, p. 363, n. 50).

In the much altered 1957 Hollywood version of Pal Joey, "I Could Write a Book" is performed by Frank Sinatra who plays the title character--now a singer instead of primarily a dancer, as Joey was when Kelly played him. In the Hollywood version Linda is played by Kim Novak, but instead of being a stenographer she is a member of the chorus in the rather sleazy San Francisco club (transplanted from Chicago) where Joey plies his art of being an entertainer and seducer. Instead of singing the song to each other as they do in the show, Joey sings it (but just the refrain, both verses having been cut) as one of his numbers in the club and calls Linda out on stage with him, much to her surprise, to help him finish the song and further reduce her resistance to him.

Frank Sinatra as Joey Evans and Kim Novak as Linda English
in the 1957 movie Pal Joey
(Please complete or pause one
video before starting another.)

The Hollywood version has been softened and sanitized to the point where the gritty noir qualities of the show have been reduced to virtual insignificance. First Vera is converted from being the cheating wife of a wealthy man to a more palatable rich widow. Second, a Hollywood ending is created in which Linda and Vera collaborate to make sure that Joey, the man they both wanted, and Linda live happily ever after--this instead of keeping the show's ending in which all three characters accept the existential fact that none of their relationships has a chance of going anywhere.

The film includes several Rodgers and Hart songs that were not written for Pal Joey but interpolated into the movie from previous Rodgers and Hart shows, songs such as "I Didn't Know What Time it Was, ""There's a Small Hotel," "The Lady Is a Tramp," and "My Funny Valentine." These give Joey (read Sinatra) the opportunity to sing songs as part of his act that will be sure fire audience pleasers, and, of course, Frank backed by Nelson Riddle arrangements delivers them splendidly. Besides "I Could Write a Book," one other song original to Pal Joey is included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook: "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered."

"I Could Write a Book," along with the other great standard from Pal Joey, "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," were fated not to become hits until long after the show opened. Just before the opening a major dispute between ASCAP and radio broadcasters kept the songs from being exposed to a wide audience at a time when they would have benefited from the publicity associated with the show. The dispute was settled in Feb. 1941, but only in 1950 did "Bewitched" finally emerge as a hit with seven versions making the top twenty on the Billboard charts. The song's rebirth pretty much coincided with a Columbia studio recording of the show issued in 1950 in which Vivienne Segal (the original Vera) and Harold Lang sang the leads. It is this studio album that eventually led to two new productions of Pal Joey, first on Long Island with Bob Fosse playing Joey and then to the the highly acclaimed Broadway revival in 1952 with Lang and Segal.

There is an "Original Cast" album for the 1952 revival of Pal Joey issued by Angel records (not shown), but Segal and Lang are replaced on the album by Jane Froman and Dick Beavers.. The substitutions took place because of contract conflicts between Columbia Records, which owned the rights to Segal, and Capitol Records, which owned the rights to the "cast album." The original Columbia studio album was reissued (with two bonus tracks) as a CD by Sony in 2003, and is the only album featuring the lead singers who actually went on to perform the roles on Broadway in the highly acclaimed 1952 revival. (The reissued 1950 Columbia Studio CD is shown at left.)

Brooks Atkinson, reviewer for The New York Times, then as now the newspaper whose reviews most influenced the fate of Broadway shows, was not prepared for a musical to be set in such a gritty corner of society as the world cheap nightclubs and dubbed the story "odious." He certainly appreciated many aspects of the production especially the Rodgers and Hart songs but underscored his rejection of the show itself by asking, "Although Pal Joey is expertly done, can you draw sweet water from a foul well?" (Block, Rodgers Reader, 68-70).

Other reviewers were more positively disposed. Wolcott Gibbs of The New Yorker wrote, "I am not optimistic by nature but it seems to me just possible that the idea of equipping a song-and-dance production with a few living, three-dimensional figures, talking and behaving like human beings, may no longer strike the boys in the business as merely fantastic" (Musical Stages, p. 201).

Gene Kelly also entered into the debate over the musical by commenting to the newspapers on the character he played: "Joey isn't bad; he just doesn't know the difference. He's an ignorant, low class bum with nothing but good looks and a good line." But Kelly also observed that in his view Larry Hart was, in distinction to Rodgers and John O'Hara, the only member of the writing team who really understood "they had created something that was a tour de force, bringing a new kind of seriousness to the musical theater." That knowledge, however, did not help Hart when, as Kelly relates, the lyricist at an after-the-opening party at his home "burst into tears and went into his room" when he heard the Atkinson review read to him over the phone. To emphasize the lyricist's despair, Kelly added, "We couldn't get him to come out." (D. Hart, Thou Swell, p. 146-147).

A week after the opening, Richard Watts, then drama critic for the New York Herald Tribune, mounted a defense of Joey--the show as well as the character.

Pal Joey is a sardonic and entirely accurate picture of the type of creature reared in the ugly life of the minor cabarets, and I think that, in my limited way, I have investigated these night clubs carefully enough to attest to the letter-perfect correctness of Mr. O'Hara's reporting. Yet, even though he is a pretty miserable specimen, Joey is by no means unbearable as a musical comedy hero. There is something so naive about his cheap caddishness, he is so essentially an innocent boob, the simple prey of any smart operator, and, above all, he is so guilefully played by Gene Kelly, that moral judgment becomes suspended and he emerges as an object for Olympian amusement rather than hatred. In particular, it seems to me so pleasant to see believable human beings, even if not admirable ones, in a musical comedy for a change that I think the utterly credible Joey should be accepted with gratitude. (reprinted in D. Hart, Thou Swell , p. 154)

It is worth noting that in the twelve years between Pal Joey's original production (1940) and its first revival (1952), public and critical opinion dispensed altogether with the idea of the show being too "real." Rodgers writes in his autobiography, "With Vivienne Segal looking not a day older and again playing the feminine lead, and Harold Lang now in the title role, [the 1952 revival of] Pal Joey was greeted as the freshest, most exciting musical of the season." And in his review, Brooks Atkinson admitted that although he hadn't liked the show the first time around he could see now that it "was a pioneer in the moving back of musical frontiers for it tells an integrated story with a knowing point-of-view. Brimming over with good music and fast on its toes, it renews confidence in the professionalism of the theatre." Gibbs confirmed his 1940 view, writing, "Standards have apparently changed because up to now I have met nobody who found anything embarrassing in the goings on" (Musical Stages, p. 202).

Lorenz Hart was known for the acerbic wit and irony, so what is he doing writing a lyric for "I Could Write a Book" that is imbued with simplicity, directness and innocence, especially for a show sporting a cynical point-of-view like Pal Joey. His partner Richard Rodgers explains:

Throughout our score for Pal Joey, Larry and I were scrupulous in making every song adhere to the hard-edged nature of the story. Taken by itself, "I Could Write a Book" is perfectly straightforward and sincere in the context of the plot, however, Joey, who had probably never read a book in his life, sang it for no other reason than to impress a naive girl he had just picked up on the street (Rodgers, Musical Stages , p. 201) .

One cannot be certain that Hart would completely agree with his partner's assessment. Seemingly ironic, Hart himself is on record as stating that "I Could Write a Book" is his favorite song from the show. One can be sure he doesn't like it so much for its romantic sentiment but much more likely for its irony, which not everyone, apparently including Rodgers, picks up on. It comes in Hart's line, "And the simple secret of the plot / Is just to tell you that I love you a lot." Joey is referring to the "plot" of the book he could supposedly write about his feelings for Linda, whereas Hart is referring to the plot of Pal Joey, which is not simple at all, but complex just as Joey (and Hart himself) is.

William G. Hyland suggests a purpose in relation to the plot for the seeming purity of feeling expressed in "I Could Write a Book." The song for Hyland serves to delay the audience from deciding Joey is as bad as he turns out to be. It is not sure about Joey even though the number that precedes "I Could Write a Book," the burlesque style "You Mustn't Kick it Around," reveals his "essential cockiness." When Joey then sings "I Could Write a Book" with its "warm melody, simple and straight forward, [and its] lyric . . . seemingly sincere"; the audience which has suspected Joey is a phony, gives Joey a reprieve and in the process intensifies its conflicted feelings over him. (Hyland, p. 245).

Other commentators have noted that when "I Could Write a Book" is heard outside the context of Pal Joey, it comes across as a guileless love ballad, which is its reputation as an American standard song. Few who don't know its origin can understand its irony.

Gerald Mast feels that both the composer and lyricist of "I Could Write a Book" intended it as a "dumb song" sung by "a conman dope to a woman who is even more stupid than he is. The refrain is deliberately repetitive and drippy driving its parallel between books and love into the ground." Nevertheless it became a big hit and Mast's explanation for how and why is not because he believes those who consume popular music are as "dumb" as the characters in the show nor are the "very good singers" who took it up merely trying to exploit low-brow taste. Rather he credits the song's popular success, quite simply, to the genius of Rodgers and Hart.

"Divorced from its ironic context," Mast notes," Hart's simple lyric is so sincere, Rodgers' simple music so charming, that the song can be sung and felt straight." He adds that "Rodgers and Hart were masters of creating the song that suggested one idea in its dramatic context and another outside it." This ability is, of course, one of the secrets of The Great American Songbook, which appropriates so much of its content from songs written primarily for use in a completely different musical space (Mast, p. 181).

Click here to read the lyrics for "I Could Write a Book," including both verses, as sung by Gene Kelly and Leila Ernst in the original 1940 production of Pal Joey.

In the original production, the song contains two verses one sung by each character. First Joey sings his verse followed by the refrain . Then Linda sings her verse and repeats the refrain.

• Harold Lang and Beverly Fite: magdapain's channel
• Dinah Washington: darwinek;
• Margaret Whiting: Oldies & standards music of 1940' to 60's
• Arthur Prysock Count Basie: TheReturnOfStephan1
• Johnny Hartman: johnnystaccata

Notes

• 1. Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered
• Introduction of "I Could Write a Book" in Pal Joey (The 1940 original Broadway production)
• "I Could Write a Book" in the 1957 movie version of Pal Joey :
• note: For complete movie details visit IMDB .
• Pal Joey (1957 movie version with Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak)--DVD
• Will Friedwald, Sinatra! The Song Is You A Singer's Art , New York: Scribners, 1995.
• James Kaplan. Frank: The Voice . New York: Doubleday, 2010.
• Geoffrey Block. Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from Show Boat to Sondheim . New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Critical Reaction to the Show Pal Joey
• The public was easier on the show and on the American musical theater's first anti-hero. Pal Joey ran for 374 performances.
• Geoffrey Block, Ed. The Richard Rodgers Reader . New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages: An Autobiography New York: Random House, 1975 (Da Capo paper bound ed., 2002, pictured above).
• The complete and authoritative lyrics for "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" can be found in:

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