"Wait Till You See Her": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"Wait Till You See Her"

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

By Jupiter is based on the play The Warrior's Husband by Julian Thompson and directed by Joshua Logan. Johnny Green was the show's musical director.

The plot focuses on the war between the Amazons, led by "Queen Hippolyta, and the men of ancient Greece, their weak husbands. When the women lose the war, they must assume subordinate roles in the world that ensues.

The reviews of the show were generally favorable especially for Ray Bolger who played Sapiens and who passed out several times from the energy he expended in his dance numbers. Nevertheless, Bolger never complained and said, "This is the first time in any Broadway show where my assignment has been literally half acting and half dancing, and I'm crazy about it" ( Dorothy Hart, Thou Swell Thou Witty The life and Lyrics of Lorenz Hart, p. 166). The song that several of the original reviewers sited as a standout was "Nobody's Heart," which is but one of the three standards that emerged from By Jupiter, the other two being "Ev'rything I've Got (belongs to you)" and "Wait Till You See Her."

"Wait Till You See Her" was published in May, 1942, and introduced in By Jupiter by Ronald Graham (playing Theseus) and the ensemble on June 3, 1942, but according to Robert Kimball, in The Complete Lyrics Of Lorenz Hart, the song "was apparently dropped from the show . . . " (p. 287, hardcover Ed.). Rodgers in his autobiography, Musical Stages, explains that though the song was well received it was cut for no other reason than the show was running a little long. He notes, however, that it was reintroduced toward the end of the show's run and that of all the songs written for the show were "despite this lack of exposure . . . picked up by singers and orchestras and today is the best-known piece in the score." (p. 212, hardcover Ed.).

In his biography of Hart, Gary Marmorstein takes issue with Rodgers' account of why (and when) the song was cut. Marmorstein points out that "Wait Till You See Her" was an irritant stretching back into By Jupiter's Boston run of previews. During that period songs were being shuffled and rewritten and "Wait Till You See Her" was a particular "headache" to director Josh Logan in terms of where the song should be placed.* Marmorstein writes of the song that was to be sung by Theseus to Antiope as combining "the best of Rodgers -- those beautifully carpentered waltzes -- with the best of Hart -- his idiomatic phrasing and, not incidentally, his focus on the appearance of the beloved." Apparently, by the time the show opened in New York, Rodgers was not satisfied with the song's placement, and after the song was performed during the June 2, opening, "ruthlessly -- and probably effectively -- pulled it from the show because it simply didn't fit" (Marmorstein, pp. 397-399). As has everyone else, Marmorstein notes that it went on to become a standard because Mabel Mercer, despite "Wait Till You See Her" having been cut from the show, began to sing it at Tony's.

*Even though "Wait Till You See Her" gave director Joshua Logan a headache, he called its being cut from By Jupiter "one of the tragedies to me of my musical career" and goes on to explain,pretty much confirming Marmorstein's account, "It was written very early on, and it was a song we were just mad about, everything about it. But every time we tried to stage it, it didn't work in the story. So finally we tried it with a whole new set of dances and costumes, and Bob Alton [the show's choreographer] worked on it, and we put it in and we opened on Broadway, and we knew it wasn't any good. And we took it out the night after the opening." (Nolan p. 298).

In his autobiography, Logan also tells the story of how everyone failed in the attempt to position "Wait Till You See Her" in the show so it would work and how they finally just "eliminated" it the day after the opening. Logan concludes, "The irony is that of all the songs in By Jupiter, the most famous is that one" (Logan, p. 155).

In the 1967 off-Broadway revival of By Jupiter, "Wait Till You See Her" was sung by Theseus (played by Bob Dishy ) as orginally intended, but in a version of the show that was significantly revised including new material by Fred Ebb.

"Wait Till You See Her" sung by Bob Dishy as Theseus
in the 1967 off-Broadway revival of By Jupiter.
(See cast album below.)

Speaking about singer Mabel Mercer when she performed at Tony's, a club on 52nd Street in NYC during the forties and fifties, songwriter Alec Wilder said it was not a special place except for Mercer. Arnold Shaw in his Book 52nd Street The Street of Jazz quotes Wilder:

She made it into a kind of chapel, she gave it an aura of calm and protection. She had magic. . . . She did dozens of songs that I and others felt impelled to write for her, songs that nobody has since heard. . . . But she also did songs that became standards because she did them. "Wait Till You See Her" was a ballad that was not used in By Jupiter . But Mabel liked it. After she began singing it, the magical thing happened. Other singers discovered it. Suddenly, the rejected song became a talked-about song. Peggy Lee added it to her repertoire. So did Sinatra. Band leaders began putting it into their books. Single-handed, Mabel revived other forgotten songs and popularized songs that would have been forgotten. (Shaw, pp. 176-177, paperback Ed.) .

The Rodgers & Hart Songbook
The Words and Music of Forty-seven of Their Songs from Twenty-two of Shows and Two Movies,
Editied and with an Iroduction by Richard Rodgers, Foward by Oscar Hammerstein II, Illustrated by Doris Lee, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1951, Fireside Paperback edition, 1977.

In his own book, American Popular Song, Wilder adds to the note above that Mabel Mercer told him that she had received the full score for the show even before it opened and had chosen "Wait Till You See Her" as the song she would sing, and writes, "I believe that her faith in the song largely contributed to its position today as a standard."

Rodgers is known for writing wonderful waltzes such as "Falling in Love with Love" and "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World." In that context, Wilder comments, "It ["Wait Till You See Her"] is one of the loveliest of all Rodgers and Hart Waltzes. Its pure melodic writing and pure lyric writing are of the best" (p. 217).

Oscar Hammerstein II in his 1951 forward to The Rodgers and Hart Songbook takes up the subject of Rodgers waltzes, even of waltzes in musical theater in general. He notes that at the time Rodgers and Hart began their collaboration in the twenties, waltzes had not that long before been "the stock in trade of the Viennese school" and although composers like Victor Herbert, Sigmund Romberg and Rudolph Friml kept the tradition going in their work in New York, American songwriters in general were leaving them behind. Like Wilder, Hammerstein singles out Rodgers "Falling in Love with Love" and "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World," and adds to the list "Lover" as among the finest examples of the genre which have all become standards. He continues:

One of my favorites is "Wait Till You See Her," a song that was placed in their last show, By Jupiter , but eventually cut from the score. . . . Read it and play it and sing it and see if you don't agree with me that it should be revived some day to take its proper place in their impressive catalogue of waltzes ( The Rodgers and Hart Songbook , p. XII) .

Remember that this comment was made several years before the recording boom of "Wait Till You See Her" got underway in the mid-fifties, and it is unlikely that Hammerstein knew that Mabel Mercer, Peggy Lee and Sinatra among others were already singing it in the clubs or on the radio. Still, it is entirely possible that his comments in The Rodgers and Hart Songbook and the inclusion of the song (both music and lyrics) in the publication influenced the revival of "Wait Till You See Her" that was, in fact, already underway.

Click here to read the lyrics for "Wait Till You See Her/[Him]" as sung by Ella Fitzgerald. (Ella does not include the verse, but switches the gender of the pronoun in the title as most women singers do.

Ed.'s note: It's not so easy to find a recording that includes the verse. Helen Merrill on her 1955 album With Strings is one. Bobby Short on his Rodgers and Hart album also sings it. Finally, as one might expect, a cast album (from the 1967 off-Broadway production) includes it, but not as the song's opener preceding the refrain as is customary, but after Theseus (Robert R. Kaye) sings the refrain through. Here is Hart's verse filled with his signature irony and, as is often the case, autobiographical reference: My Friends who knew me Never would know me, They'd look right through me, Above and below me, And ask, "Who's that man? Who is that man? That's not my lighthearted friend!" Meeting one girl was the start of the end. Love is a simple emotion A friend should comprehend. And here is the off-Broadway By Jupiter cast album: Amazon iTunes Listen to "Wait Till You See Her" track above .

• Ella Fitzgerald: Overjazz Records
• Vic Damone: reduxmisc
• Doris Day: 60otaku4
• Miles Davis: RatBatBIue

Notes

• Other songs written for By Jupiter currently included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook :
• 1. Ev'rything I've Got (belongs to You)
• 2. Nobody's Heart (belongs to me)
• Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages: An Autobiography New York: Random House, 1975 (Da Capo paper bound ed., 2002, pictured above).
• Gary Marmorstein A Ship Without A Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart , New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012
• Frederick Nolan Lorenz Hart: Poet on Broadway , Boston: Northeastern UP, 1996.
• Joshua Logan Josh, My Up and Down, In and Out Life New York: Delacorte Press, 1976
• Arnold Shaw 52nd Street: The Street Of Jazz Da Capo Press (reprint of The Street That Never Slept , 1971)
• Listen to and watch Mabel Mercer on YouTube .
• Mabel Mercer, Tony's, and the Birth of a Standard
• Alec Wilder, American Popular Song The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 , New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.
• The complete, authoritative lyrics for "Wait Till You See Her" can be found in:

Cite this page: "Wait Till You See Her": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/w/wait_till_you_see_her.html