"The Lady Is a Tramp": Song history, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"The Lady Is a Tramp"

Songs from Babes in Arms other than "I Wish I Were In Love Again" included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook:

For a complete listing of songs used in the original production of the Broadway show Babes in Arms, see IBDB song list.

The Mickey Rooney & Judy Garland Collection (Babes in Arms / Babes on Broadway / Girl Crazy / Strike Up the Band)
DVD box set

About the Show Babes in Arms

Babes in Arms was not only a typical "Come on kids, let's put on a show" musical, but perhaps the first of its kind. The idea for it emerged while Rodgers and Hart were walking in Central Park and noticed some creative children making up their own games. It's plot was slight and far fetched but the Rodgers and Hart score produced more American Standard songs than any other show by the songwriting team.

The story finds a troupe of Depression era vaudeville performers who are unable to get work deciding to light out for the territories in an attempt to make some kind of living, leaving behind their kids to fend for themselves. The youngsters decide to resist an attempt to send them to a work farm by putting on a show of their own to raise money for a local youth center. Nothing much comes of it until a deus ex machina intervenes. A French transatlantic aviator crash-lands his plane in their midst thereby generating enough publicity to make the kids' show a hit.

Babes in Arms tried out in Boston and then opened in New York at the Shubert Theater April 14, 1937. Despite its lack of the de rigueur line of semi-nude show girls to stir up ticket sales, it ran for the better part of a year (289 performances), closing December 18, 1937. Rodgers and Hart had decided they wanted this show to be all their own so they wrote the book as well as the words and music; and they brought in George Balanchine for the choreography. The cast was restricted to youngsters, many of whom eventually became stars, and included Mitzi Green, Alex Courtney, Alfred Drake, Ray Heatherton, The Nicholas Brothers, Dan Dailey, Robert Rounseville, Grace MacDonald, and Wynn Murray.

The show within the show that the kids put on is a revue, and all but one of the Rodgers and Hart songs are the focal points for its skits. The only exception is "My Funny Valentine." It is integrated into the main story, Billie, played by Mitzi Green, singing it about her new love "Val," short for "Valentine," played by Ray Heatherton. Richard Rodgers has noted that because he and Hart were so interested in writing songs that helped to develop the story, they went so far as to change the name of one of their characters to Valentine to make the song fit the story. (Musical Stages, p, 181, hard-bound Ed.).

Rodgers and Hart wrote "The Lady Is a Tramp" specifically for their lead, the energetic teenage movie star Mitzi Green, who introduced it in the show. Some have thought the song is a little too "worldly" for a kid to sing, but that didn't stop it from becoming, at the time and against a lot of terrific competition, the show's biggest hit.

Philip Furia and Michael Lasser write of the song that it is one of the team's best list songs and that Hart wrote the lyric, in a single day, "about a down-to earth lady who scorns such affectations as arriving late at the theater, going to crap games with royalty and wearing furs to Harlem nightclubs. Because the singer refuses to behave pretentiously, other women label her a tramp . . ." (America's Songs, p. 139).

Revivals: There have been no Broadway revivals of Babes in Arms perhaps because despite the spectacular score, the book is just too slight and too dated; however, there have been two studio albums: one with Mary Martin on Columbia Records, from 1951; and one with Judy Blazer and Judy Kaye from 1989. This production uses the original 1937 orchestrations and therefore provides a rare opportunity to hear the musical portions of the show more or less as originally performed, before so many of the songs emerged as standards creating their own indelible impressions. There was also one New York concert revival by City Center Encores! in Feb. 1999, for which there is a cast album. Despite the lack of a Broadway revival, Babes in Arms has been mounted countless times in high school and stock productions using a revised book with a summer theater as the setting and in which the interns put on the show within the show.

The Lorenz Hart Website in its discussion of the revivals of Babes in Arms offers a refutation of the notion that Babes in Arms has never been recreated in its original form because it is "too slight and too dated."

About the Movie Babes in Arms

Although there was a movie Babes in Arms based somewhat loosely on this show, "The Lady Is a Tramp" was included only as instrumental background music. In fact, the forces that created the movie version of Babes in Arms (1939), with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney) inexplicably got rid of most of the great Rodgers and Hart songs leaving only "Where or When" (and the title song of the show).

"The Lady Is a Tramp" was not sung in the movie version of the show. Instead, it's melody was used as background music for the scenes in which the character Rosalie appeared--its apparent purpose to suggest the less than admirable (read tramp-like) means Rosalie employs to get the lead in the kids' show. There is a double irony here. The first irongy is that Hart's lyric for "The Lady Is a Tramp," clearly intends "tramp" to be a badge of honor signifying the down-to-earth genuineness of the lady who calls herself that. The second irony is that the movie makers ignore Hart's intended irony and use the melody to disparage the character whom the melody accompanies reinforcing her lack of genuineness.

"The Lady Is a Tramp" was, however, added to the movie version of a Rodgers and Hart show for which it wasn't written. The song was interpolated into the 1957 film Pal Joey where it was sung by Frank Sinatra with a Nelson Riddle arrangement--and has since become one of Sinatra's signature songs. It was also used in Words and Music, (1948), a biopic of Rodgers and Hart, a film that makes every attempt to tell their story as it didn't happen. That doesn't, however, detract from Lena Horne's sparkling performance.

Click here to read the lyrics for "The Lady Is a Tramp" as sung by Ella Fitzgerald
on the album The Best of the Songbooks (and others). (This version includes the verse.

• Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald: golfskilodge ;
• Frank Sinatra in Pal Joey: georgesquerelle007;
• Tommy Dorsey: konidolfine
• Lena Horne in Words and Music: RidhimaAraina;
• Lena Horne, 1994: MyyyTunes5
• Oscar Peterson: Mask3
• Gerry Mulligan/ Chet Baker: Dariasal
• Ella Fitzgerald, 1956: classicvinylbiz
• Mel Torme, 1956: BethlehemRecords
• Peggy Lee, 1963: lothbury0
• Susannah McCorkle: 1993: earthcadet
• Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, 2011:

Notes

• 1. I Wish I Were in Love Again
• 2. Johnny One Note
• 3. My Funny Valentine
• 4. Where or When
• For a complete listing of songs used in the movie Babes in Arms , see IMDB soundtrack .
• Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages: An Autobiography , New York: Random House, 1975 (Da Capo paper bound ed., 2002, pictured above.
• Babes in Arms studio cast album 1951
• Babes in Arms studio cast album 1989
• Babes in Arms cast album from the 1999 New York City Center Encores! production
• Frederick Nolan, Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway , New York, Oxford University Press, 1994.
• Words and Music --DVD
• "The Lady Is a Tramp" on the charts:
• Tommy Dorsey (Victor 25673): first charted 11/06/37, remained on charts for 2 weeks peaking at number #15.
• Bernie Cummins (Vocalion 3714): first charted 11/13/37, remained on charts for 1 week peaking at number #16.
• Joe Rines (Victor 24151): first charted 10/23/37, remained on charts for 1 week peaking at number #19.
• Sophie Tucker (Decca 1472): first charted 11/13/37, remained on charts for #1 week peaking at number #19.
• Source: Joel Whitburn, Pop Memories 1890-1954: The History of American Popular Music , 1986
• Introduction of "The Lady Is a Tramp" in Babes in Arms
• See IBDB for complete show production dates, complete cast, other credits, songs/sung by, Broadway revivals, etc.
• Lena Horne sings "The Lady Is a Tramp" in Words and Music .
• (Please complete or pause one video before starting another.)
• View a discography of Ella CDs at Amazon
• The complete, authoritative lyrics for "The Lady Is a Tramp'" can be found in:

Cite this page: "The Lady Is a Tramp": Song history, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/l/lady_is_a_tramp.html