"My Funny Valentine": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"My Funny Valentine"

Songs from Babes in Arms other than "My Funny Valentine" 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.

Babes in Arms is 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, as incredulous as it sounds, their children 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 in the form of a French transatlantic aviator crash-landing his plane in their midst generates 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.

Babes in Arms is abackstager. 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 character to Valentine to make the song fit it. (Musical Stages, p, 181, hard-bound Ed.).

Revivals: There have been no Broadway revivals of Babes in Arms perhaps because despite the spectacular score, the book is just too slight and dated too quickly; 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. The latter 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

The Hollywood forces that created the movie version of Babes in Arms (1939, with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney) somewhat inexplicably got rid of most of the great Rodgers and Hart songs, including "My Funny Valentine," leaving only "Where or When" and the title song of the show as well as a brief instrumental version of "The Lady Is a Tramp." Although it is inexplicable to omit great songs written for the very production from they are being cut, we say "somewhat" because the movie went on to make a lot of money without these songs. Go Figure.

As if to try to make up for the faux pas of cutting these great songs, another was committed--but in another movie. In the film version of the 1940 Rodgers and Hart show Pal Joey, Kim Novak (dubbed by Trudy Erwin) sings "My Funny Valentine." The performers (as well as the audiences) for both films would have been better served had the movie makers just let Judy Garland sing this great ballad in the movie where it belonged, Babes in Arms, the film version of the show for which it was written. Here's what came of it:

"My Funny Valentine": Kim Novak (dubbed by Trudy Erwin) in Pal Joey (1957). For more on Rodgers and Hart songs actually written for Pal Joey, see the Cafe Songbook pages for " Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered " and " I Could Write a Book ."

"My Funny Valentine," although one of the most often performed and recorded of American standard songs, was one of those works that did not emerge from its original venue, the Broadway show Babes in Arms (1937), wings spread and ready to take off into immortality. There was no recording by Mitzi Green who sang it in the show, the only contemporaneous recording being an instrumental version by two pianists, Edgar Fairchild and Adam Carroll who played in the show's orchestra. Not until the Hal McIntyre orchestra with a Ruth Gaylor vocal barely crept into the top twenty in February, 1945 did any recording get noticed at all, and it would be difficult to make the case that this one was the record that started the song on its way. Neither can the 1948 biopic of the songwriters, Words and Music, be given a lot of credit. It did a lot of good with regard to exposing the Rodgers and Hart songbook to a broader public, but "My Funny Valentine" itself was not used in the film. In fact it wasn't until the cabaret and jazz singers as well as jazz instrumentalists, so often the key figures in recognizing and promoting the greatest American Songbook songs got hold of it in the late forties early fifties, that "My Funny Valentine" achieved its permanent and esteemed place in the canon of American popular song. Among these, Will Friedwald reports that Mabel Mercer was singing it in the clubs and apparently Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan came across it because we have their 1952 recording. (Ed.'s note: Will Friedwald also points out it was about this time that the creation of the long playing record that encouraged jazz musicians to start exploring the Rodgers and Hart songbook (Friedwald, Stardust, p. 350, paper bound Ed.).

The Hal McIntyre Orchestra with vocal by Ruth Gaylor
(Bluebird 0837) reached number sixteen on the charts
February 24, 1945, where it remained for one week.

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

Click here to read the lyrics for "My Funny Valentine" as sung by Ella Fitzgerald
on the album Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Songbook.
(This version does include the verse.)

Stephen Sondheim.
Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes. New York: Alfred A. Knoph, 2010 (pp. 25-26).

"My Funny Valentine," was not only unusual in the time it took to get started on its way to being a standard, but it has a lyric surprisingly atypical for a love ballad in that it celebrates not the virtues of the loved one, but his (or her) less than stellar traits: looks that are "laughable, unphotographable," a body that is "less than Greek" and a mind that is "dim-witted." The lover must have something though, for the singer commands: "Don't change a hair for me, / Not if you care for me." Perhaps it took this quality of irony, not everything is what it appears to be, so prevalent on the hip, jazz filled side of the Fifties, to make "My Funny Valentine" finally get itself fully appreciated by the musicians who eventually gave it its immortality.

Richard Rodgers uses "My Funny Valentine" as an example of how his first writing partner Hart, who earlier in his career had seemed to "sacrifice warmth for wit" later on began to show off less and become more concerned with emotion." Rodgers writes in his introduction to The Rodgers and Hart Songbook that "I can think of no lyric more touched with tenderness than "Funny Valentine" (Richard Rodgers Reader, p. 268, paperback Ed.) Apparently the public agrees for the song is now so often taken as purely romantic that the ironic nature of the lyric is pretty much forgotten or ignored.

It is hard to ignore it, however, when it is sung directly to a valentine who is a celebrated beauty. This is illustrated poignantly when Sting sings the song to his wife. The audience can't resist laughing at his describing her as "laughable / unphotographable," etc. with the unmistakable evidence to the contrary --Trudi Styler herself-- directly in front of them. (See performance on the Cafe Songbook Main Stage above. Ed.'s Note: Stephen Sondheim takes exception to Hart's use of the word "unphotographable" as incorrect, an example of Hart's sloppy use of language: "Unless the object of the singer's affection is a vampire, surely what Hart means is "unphotogenic." Only vampires are unphotographable, but affectionate "-enic" rhymes are hard to come by" {Finishing the Hat, p. 153} We will leave it to you to decide if "unphotographable" works in "Funny Valentine" or not.)

An explanation that adds sense to the irony may be that the subtext of the words is a comment by Hart (a lyricist known to include autobiographical references in his work) on himself; that is, the far less than perfect figure being described is the lyricist himself who was in fact not a conventionally handsome man--though no one would claim he was "dim-witted." It makes complete sense that Hart might think of his lyric as a representation of how a prospective lover might think of him. If this is so the tenderness referred to by Rodgers is all the more poignant because Hart can be seen as suggesting he is worthy of love despite his inadequacies, making the "My Funny Valentine" lyric a deeply confessional poem. Will Friedwald makes the case (in Stardust Melodies, p. 358) that "My Funny Valentine" is for a woman to sing and that it is culturally acceptable for a woman to point out these kind of shortcomings in a man without destroying the relationship altogether, whereas disaster would certainly follow, and quickly, if a man described a woman's looks as "laughable." (Apparently Sting felt confident enough about his marriage to pull this off though many in his audience, as evidenced by their laughs, seemed a bit nervous about it.)

Hart's biographer Frederick Nolan notes that the songwriters never had any doubts about the song. In fact, they were so sure it was "clearly destined for success" that they changed the name of a major character in Babes in Arms to "Val" to match the song (Frederick Nolan, Lorenz Hart: Poet on Broadway, p. 217). In Rodger's autobiography, he makes the point that another reason for changing the character's name to Val was in the service of emphasizing the integration of the song into the plot: "My Funny Valentine" "was very much about a specific character in the release; in fact before the show opened we even changed the character's name to Val" (Musical Stages, p. 181, hardcover Ed.).

That Rodgers begins "My Funny Valentine" in a minor key (somewhat unusual for him) but changes to the major near the end of the song has interested several critics. As Rodgers' biographer Geoffrey Block indicates, although songwriters like Gershwin and Porter occasionally used the minor, especially to evoke the sound of Jewish music, the major was "overwhelmingly the preferred mode." He goes on to say,

When Rodgers composed a song in the minor, most famously in "My Funny Valentine," the lyrics often suggested and in fact led to an ending in major (Block, Richard Rodgers , p. 23) .

Alec Wilder, while elaborating on the full musical structure of the song, also notes this change from minor to major. Rodgers first musical idea, according to Wilder, is expressed in C minor for four measures. The composer remains in the minor for the next four measures, but "finally a new idea is introduced with major rather than minor harmony and "builds to a remarkable climax . . . fitting the climax of the lyric: 'stay, little Valentine, stay!'" (Wilder, pp. 206-207), which in fact includes both major and minor chords as if to suggest a final ambivalence embedded in the plea lying behind the overall major finish.

The sound of the minor key often evokes an undercurrent of sadness or lament, which in this case reinforces the conflict of the singer as expressed in the verse, between the image the singer's "funny valentine" tries to present outwardly ("Behold the way our fine-feathered friend / His virtue doth parade") and what he is really like inside. The refrain reveals that the singer is not fooled by her love's show-off antics because she knows that inside he remains her "fav'rite work of art." As Will Friedwald puts it, "What makes the whole thing so remarkable is the happy/sad nature of the lyric, brilliantly mirroring the major/minor nature of the music" (Stardust Melodies, p. 360).

The most comprehensive discussion of "My Funny Valentine" can be found in Will Friedwald's book Stardust Melodies in which are included essays on twelve of the most well known American standard songs. In the essay on "Valentine," Friedwald begins with a discussion of the differences between Rodgers in his collaboration with Lorenz Hart and his work with Oscar Hammerstein II. He notes, for example, that although Rodgers was primarily devoted to writing music for shows with both of his partners the collaboration with Hart is remembered almost exclusively for the songs themselves while the reputation of the work with Hammerstein is dominated by the shows for which the songs were written.

As for "My Funny Valentine" itself he begins by tracing its early recording history (or lack of one) which leads to his conclusion that "It is only a slight exaggeration to say that "My Funny Valentine" was really born when Frank Sinatra recorded it in November, 1953." The song became the first track on Sinatra's first Capitol album, Songs for Young Lovers, though, as Friedwald informs us, Sinatra had been singing it for a couple of months at a club in Paramus, New Jersey, and that there is, in fact, a "location" recording with terrible sound quality extant. More importantly this was the time of the start of Sinatra's comeback, which is most often identified with his role in "From Here to Eternity," and so in turn "My Funny Valentine" is associated with Sinatra at this seminal time.

Although other critics cited on this page discuss the musical structure of the song, Friedwald makes it's structure significantly easier to understand for anyone who is relatively unsophisticated about such matters -- but without over simplifying it. His discussion of the verse places it in an historical context going back to the 17th century or earlier and points out that in a recorded performance Eileen Farrell sings it a capella to emphasize its pre-classical qualities, and Paul Desmond's jazz instrumental with strings includes allusions to earlier musical periods." He also illustrates how the music supports the meaning in the lyric in a way that should satisfy the musically aware as well as being informative for the musically naive.

Friedwald credits another critic, William G. Hyland, with the observation that Rodgers was in the habit of starting with a simple melody and then "dress[ing] it up with a not-so-simple series of chords," and then adds that this characteristic "may be one reason why Rodgers's songs are so beloved of jazz singers and instrumentalists." He elaborates on this point in his discussion of Miles Davis and his various late fifties and early sixties quintets' recordings of "My Funny Valentine."

These Davis units were among the first ensembles to explore the concept of modal jazz. It seems logical that "Funny Valentine"'s unique harmonic sequence made it attractive to musicians who were thinking along those lines. Rodgers and Hart may have been contemplating the musical past with their allusions to classical and possibly medieval and Renaissance, techniques, but somehow they wound up looking straight into jazz's future. ( Stardust Melodies , p. 360) .

Friedwald goes on to chronicle "Valentines" rise to become "one of the signature songs of the LP era." This status was anchored by Ella Fitzgerald's Rodgers and Hart Songbook album version, which includes the verse as insisted on by arranger Buddy Bregman as a way of distinguishing Ella's rendition from the virtual avalanche of "Valentine" recordings during this period. He goes on to comment on more than a sampling of the plethora of both pop and jazz recordings of this song and explains that virtually all jazz versions of "Valentine" are modern, Dixieland or swing versions being rare. By noting that one of Artie Shaw's last recordings was "My Funny Valentine," he illustrates the transformative power of the song for, as he comments, "Hearing [Shaw] stretch out on the tune for five minutes . . . makes him sound like a whole new clarinetist, and in his playing here he goes well beyond the traditional boundaries of swing style" (Stardust Melodies, p. 365).

It is, for Friedwald, the jazz pianists who dominate the instrumental landscape for "Valentine" and he comments on a wide range of performances of the song from Cedar Walton's to Marian McPartland's to Keith Jarrett's. He claims that the pianists have played "Valentine" more frequently than any other tune except possibly "Body and Soul," their most common objective being to use it as a means for getting "introspective and melancholy."

As for singers, Friedwald states that it was equally loved by the straight pop singers as well as the jazz inflected ones. He comments on Johnny Mathis, Julie London and Dinah Shore in the former category giving special praise to Shore's version. The more jazz-oriented singers fall into two categories: "sincere and swinging or looking at it in another way those who focus on the words and those who are more interested in working with the music. He devotes more space to Sarah Vaughan than anyone else, but presents insights of value on Matt Dennis, Lee Wiley and others too numerous to mention here.

Of the many anecdotes meant to illustrate the ubiquity of "My Funny Valentine" generally, Friedwald tells the one about a record buyer asking the clerk at a record store if he has any albums that don't include "My Funny Valentine."

• Chris Botti and Sting: ChrisBotti
• Joshua Bell and Kristen Chenoweth: JoshuaBellVEVO
• Hal McIntyre: MrRJDB1969
• Sarah Vaughan: SassyDivine
• Frank Sinatra/Songs for Young Lovers: Sinatra Fan
• Miles Davis: symbolkid
• Etta James: yvonnekoenderman
• Steven Pasquale: FamousInNY

Notes

• 1. I Wish I were in Love Again
• 2. Johnny One Note
• 3. The Lady Is a Tramp
• 4. Where or When
• For a complete listing of songs used in the movie Babes in Arms , see IMDB soundtrack .
• Introduction of "My Funny Valentine" in Babes in Arms .
• 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
• Geoffrey Block, Ed. The Richard Rodgers Reader . New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Geoffrey Block, Richard Rodgers , New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
• Alec Wilder, American Popular Song The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 , New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.
• The complete, authoritative lyrics for "title'" can be found in:

Cite this page: "My Funny Valentine": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/m/my_funny_valentine_p.html