"These Foolish Things (remind me of you)": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"These Foolish Things"

Eric Maschwitz, who was born in England to Jewish parents, immigrants from Lithuania, occasionally used the pseudonym Holt Marvell to avoid his name's German associations at a time when Great Britain and Germany were close to or at war.

Sources: The material, including quotations, in the column to the right is drawn mainly from the article by Robin Miller, "'Sold for a Song' by Composer, Show Tune Grossed $500,000," The Milwaukee Journal, August 7, 1963, one of a series of articles about "Songs that Made Fortunes."

A similar account appears in the Eric Maschwitz autobiography No Chip on My Shoulder, London: Herbert Jenkins, 1957, as well as in Tim De Lisle, The Lives of the Great Songs. London: Pavilion Books. 1994.

According to the Encyclopedia of the Musical Theater, Eric Maschwitz "claimed that Cole Porter's 'You're the Top' gave him the idea of creating a catalog-type lyric made up of 'small fleeting memories of young love'." (See List or Catalog Song in the Cafe Songbook Glossary.)

A London revue titled Spread it Abroad (the revue that opened the then new Saville Theater in London on April 1, 1936) is often cited as the show for which "These Foolish Things" was written; but, in fact, that was not the case. In an August 7, 1963 article by Robin Miller on the origins of the song, songwriters Eric Maschwitz (lyrics) and Jack Strachey (music) reveal what led up to the song's use in Spread it Abroad.

Miller explains that Maschwitz while working for the BBC in 1934 had the responsibility of producing a weekly radio revue. During a particular week, the songwriter who had been assigned to write a number for that week's revue took ill and Maschwitz himself took on the duty. As Maschwitz recalled it, he went to sleep the night before the song was needed in a bit of a sweat with nothing specific in mind and somehow woke up with a title, "These Foolish Things," but nothing more. He did have in mind, however, a Cole Porter song ["You're the Top"] in which Porter presents a list of many amusing qualities about the object of the singer's affections. Maschwitz explains, "It ["You're the Top"] was the first of what are now called catalog songs [orlist songs]. I wanted to do the same thing for a romantic number," and Maschwitz claims that what he and Strachey wrote that day turned out to be the first romantic "list" or "catalog" song, soon to be followed by others such as the standards "All the Things You Are," "Thanks for the Memory," and "The Way You Look Tonight." (See Philip Furia's and Michael Lasser's commentary on this in the Critics Corner, below.)

Robin Miller then quotes Maschwitz on how everything else but the title got written, performed, and finally included in Spread it Abroad:

Anyway, I sat down to write it, and a miracle happened -- as miracles so seldom do in song writing. It was as if it was all stored up in my head. Ideas and rhymes flowed on to the typewriter. . . . A cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces An airline ticket to romantic places. . . . . At twelve it was finished. I rang Jack Strachey up and broke the news to him that he had to set the number to music by 6 o'clock that evening.

Other sources attribute Maschwitz's inspiration for the lyric to something more specific than the deadline for a radio program. Maschwitz was romantically linked to the Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong while working in Hollywood during the early thirties, and the lyric for "These Foolish Things" is supposedly evocative of his longing for her after they parted and he returned to England. However, the lyricist himself does not mention this.

The song, Maschwitz goes on to explain, was far from an instant success. It went into the radio revue where it was "beautifully sung by Patrick Waddington and a talented, lovely girl called Joan Carr -- who is now the Countess of Drogheda," but even though the songwriters' friends loved it, his publisher, as well as many others, rejected it, no doubt later regretting the torrent of royalties that eventually poured in.

It wasn't, according to Maschwitz, until six months later that the stroke of luck required to get the song out and about occurred when the West Indian-British cabaret star Leslie "Hutch" Hutcinson was visiting Maschwitz's studio and saw the "battered manuscript of 'These Foolish Things' . . . lying on top of the piano." Maschwitz (and Miller) finish the fantastic story:

"What's this?" he [Hutchinson] asked. Maschwitz explained. "Hutch" placed the music on the rack, played and sang the song right through. The Moment he had finished, he turned to Maschwitz and said: "I have a recording session in two days' time. May I use it?" And use it he did. Not only did "Hutch" make a record which both the composer and the lyricist still think is the best one of the song, but he found a publisher -- and made the song a hit. An early Leslie Hutchinson recording of "These Foolish Things" but not the first one that Maschwitz refers to above.

It was only after the "Hutch" recording that "These Foolish Things" got put into Spread it Abroad where it was sung by Dorothy Dickson, a performance that stopped the show. After that no less than Irving Berlin bought the American rights "and added two bars to the middle section, thus achieving the conventional 32 bar construction." In New York (and the United States) it also became a major success.

*A bit of a mystery exists as to why most, but not all, versions of the sheet music for "These Foolish Things" credit Harry Link as having written the music along with Jack Strachey. The mystery derives from the fact that all of the sources giving Maschwitz's account of the actual writing of the song clearly state that Strachey wrote the music, whereas Link is not mentioned at all. One might also find it interesting that although Link wrote the music for a lot of songs, for his only other big hit, "I've Got a Feeling I'm Fallin," he also shares the music credit with a much more well known composer, Fats Waller.

The explanation for Link's role may lie in the song's connection to Irving Berlin, as referred to above: more specifically with the claim that after Berlin bought the American rights to the song in 1936, Berlin himself added two bars to "These Foolish Things" making it conform to the standard 32 bar format of most popular songs of the time. It may have been that Berlin himself did this, but given that by 1936 he was already one of the most famous and wealthy composers of popular song of all time it seems more likely that Link, working for Berlin, made the change. Link, an American songwriter whose primary work was in the music publishing business, had connections to Berlin and his company for at least ten years as of the time Berlin bought the American rights to "These Foolish Things." His history with Berlin even includes rewriting the the lyric for one of Berlin's songs. In 1926, Link along with two other songwriters, one of whom was Babe Ruth's agent, rewrote, with Berlin's permission, the lyric for Berlin's 1914 song "Along Came Ruth" so it could be sung as part of the baseball star's vaudeville act. Also at least some of Link's own songs of the period were published by Berlin's company.

Peter Mintun, who sings the full British lyric as it was performed in Spread it Abroad (See video just below.), comments on the added need to alter the lyrics for an American audience. He points out that this is heard in rhymes like "haunted" and "enchanted" (which only works for Americans with the British pronunciation "enchaunted." Link or whoever made the change solves the problem by excising the entire bridgethat contains the offending transatlantic rhyme problem and merely replacing it with the bridge from the following refrain. (Visit the Cafe Songbook Lyrics Lounge to compare and contrast the two bridges).

Popular music scholar Peter Mintun sings and plays the British version of "These Foolish Things" as sung in Spread it Abroad . (Note that on the sheet music shown in the video Harry Link does not receive a credit.) For the fullest rendition of the American version of the lyrics, listen to Ella Fitzgerald on the album, Ella and Louis Again -- a performance not to be missed.

This evidence is not definitive regarding Link's role, but it at least makes it plausible that he was given the job by Berlin or Berlin's music publishing firm of Americanizing bits of the lyric as well as the music -- and for that work was given "music by" credit. If this occurred, it would have made for a profitable few minutes work for him considering the money the song has brought in over the years -- though one shouldn't forget that it didn't take Maschwitz and Strachey much longer to create the entire song. Maybe it just comes down to this comment on the "mysterious third name ["the missing Link"] on the credits" by Robert Cushman in his article on "These Foolish Things":

Presumably he [Link] had somethng to do with sprucing up "These Foolish Things" for the US market, though it's hard to tell what. Maybe he was just good at royalties ( Cushman, pp. 40-41 ). (Also see the definition of " cutting in " in the Cafe Songbook glossary.

According to Strachey, after "These Foolish Things" he never wrote another song that achieved its level of success. Apparently, "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," which he and Maschwitz wrote in 1939, and which is a standard by any measure, did not qualify. As he states: "I've been trying to write another 'These Foolish Things' all these years and I have never managed it."

Robin Miller comments, in his 1963 article, that it is quite possible that a certain kind of songwriting success is no longer possible because "The great songs of the 1930s were written by adults for adults. People with experience of life and love, who could appreciate wit and were not afraid of sentiment. And sentiment, of course, is what is revealed by every line, every note of 'These Foolish Things'."

Philip Furia and
Michael Lasser,
America's Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley, New York: Routledge, 2006.

Maschwitz tells us that he had Cole Porter'slist song"You're the Top" in mind when he set out to write what became "These Foolish Things," but he distinguishes Porter's song from his as being the difference between a list song whose primary purpose is to be amusing, even if the general subject is romance, and one whose purpose is only to convey the depth of feeling that accompanies love.

Philip Furia and Michael Lasser in their book America's Songs elaborate on the distinction that Maschwitz sets forth by pointing out that the great majority of 1930s list songs such as Porter's and "The Lady Is a Tramp" by Rodgers and Hart "follow a longstanding comic tradition in which each successive image or allusion tries to 'top' what came before." They go on to note that even songs that are not ostensibly funny at their core such as "I Can't Get Started" by Ira Gershwin (words) and Vernon Duke (music) or "Thanks for the Memory" with lyrics by Leo Robin and music by Ralph Rainger "still leaven the sentiment with humor."

This is not the case, however, with "These Foolish Things," which presents, they write, "a list of haunting images of lost love -- 'a tinkling piano in the next apartment,' 'a cigarette that bears a lipsticks traces,' 'a telephone that rings but who's to answer'" (Furia, p. 138)--what Maschwitz himself describes as a list of "Small, fleeting memories of young love" (Encyclopedia Of The Musical Theatre).

Robert Cushman comments that the achievement of Strachey's music is how it manages "to provide a long wistful line to accompany each of the foolish things -- and what Strachey does best -- to build to a climax, philosophic or despairing as the singer chooses, on the final "oh, how the ghost of you clings."

But like so many other commentators, Cushman wants to give Maschwitz the lion's share of the credit for the brilliance of "These Foolish Things." He goes so far as to state that he has "some claim to be considered the leading British lyricist of his era, Noel Coward not withstanding." This Cushman attributes at least partly to the images in his songs which made them "shorthand for Old Mayfair (a London district noted as a place where wealthy Brits went to recall life before The Great War changed everything).

Cushman's article on "These Foolish Things" is critically the most insightful both on the song itself and the performances of it, at least those that preceded it.

Click here to read the lyrics for "These Foolish Things," as sung by Frank Sinatra
on the album Best of the Columbia Years
(Sinatra omits the verseas well as changing other portions of
Maschwitz's original on this recording.)
Listen to Leslie Hutchinson's and/or the Ella Fitzgerald's recording above to hear the verse as well the rest of what Maschwitz wrote.

In the verse, Maschwitz (aka Marvell) has his singer setting up the refrain by lamenting how he/she continues to be bound to his love even though they are no longer together because " those little things remain, / that bring me Happiness or pain." The refrain then becomes Maschwitz's immortal list of those "little things." Sinatra not only omits the verse but alters the lyric further by leaving out the the second refrain (the one that begins with "First daffodils and long excited cables, / And candle lights on little corner tables"). altogether. He preserves only one five line portion from Maschwitz's third refrain by grafting it onto the end of the first refrain as the conclusion of the song. The five lines Sinatra borrows for his ending are: The smile of Garbo and the scent of roses, The waiter whistling as the last bar closes, The song that Crosby sings, These foolish things Remind me of you. But he doesn't stop there. He changes up "Garbo" for "Turner," his second wife Ava Gardner's friend and fellow movie star, Lana Turner. He leaves his chief vocal competitor, Bing Crosby, stand as in the original lyric. When Ella Fitzgerald gets to "Crosby," she imitates the crooner by covering some notes with a "boo, boo, boo, boo, boo," which not only adds a little impersonation shtick to her rendition, but is also perhaps a comment on Bing's style of scat. ( Listen to Ella .) As discussed above, both the music and the lyric had minor changes made in them for the American edition of the song. The most significant change made to the lyric, to accommodate an American ear, is the replacement of the bridge in the second refrain with the bridge from the third refrain, thus eliminating the rhyme of "haunted" and "enchanted" -- which only works for Americans if they hear "enchanted" pronounced "enchaunted," which American singers would be very unlikely to sing. Link (or whoever made this change) did it without writing anything new, rather only by shifting things around. Here are the two bridges: [Second Refrain only in British version] I knew that this was bound to be; These things have haunted me, For you've entirely enchanted me, . . . (As sung by Mintun above in the second refrain only) [Second and third refrain in American version] "How strange, how sweet, To find you still; These things are dear to me, They seem to bring you near to me, . . . (As sung by Ella Fitzgerald in both the second and third refrains) Other American singers alter the lyrics (usually by shortening them) in various ways: Sarah Vaughan sings the verse and the first refrain and that's it. Billie Holiday (in her 1952 recording ) drops the verse, sings the first refrain, jumps to the bridge of the third refrain, and finishes with the last portion of that refrain -- and so on. Maschwitz's series of images is a tour de force, and its a shame any have to be dropped. Consider this from the second refrain: The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations, Silk stockings thrown aside, dance invitations. Oh, how the ghost of you clings! These foolish things Remind me of you.

• Leslie Hutchinson: 1930sbirds
• Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson: direfranchement
• Billie Holiday, 1936: purple0accident
• Billie Holiday, 1951: RoundMidnightTV
• Frank Sinatra: catman916
• Benny Goodman/Helen Ward: arc3391
• Benny Goodman Sextet: cdbpdx
• Nat King Cole: catman916
• Ella Fitzgerald (At the Opera House): direfranchement
• Etta James: richarddeming
• James Brown: dscuts
• Bryan Ferry: bryanferry
• Count Basie Trio with Benny Carter: Lucas Ferarri Jazz
• Michael Bublé: RocafeIIa

Notes

• Encyclopedia Of The Musical Theatre Da Capo Press 1980
• For a photo of Strachey (at piano) working with Maschwitz, see the blog site Songbook .
• The complete, authoritative lyrics for "These Foolish Things" (American version) can be found in:
• Reading Lyrics , Edited and with an Introduction by Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball, New York: Pantheon Books, 2000.

Cite this page: "These Foolish Things (remind me of you)": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/t/these_foolish_things.html