"You're Nearer": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video

"You're Nearer"

Other songs written for the Broadway show Too Many Girls currently included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook: I Didn't Know What Time It Was.

One song included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook was written for the 1940 movie Too Many Girls: You're Nearer

There was some carry over of personnel from the Broadway show Too Many Girls (1939) to its namesake Hollywood offshoot, including director George Abbott; however, Richard Carlson, Lucille Ball, Ann Miller and others actors from Hollywood replaced their Broadway counterparts in the cast. It was Lucy replacing Marcy Westcott that led to her meeting Desi Arnaz (who had played the part of a bongo playing college fullback on Broadway) on the movie set, an accident of fate that affected show business history way more than the show and the film combined.

*Lucile Ball and Desi Arnaz were married on November 30, 1940, a week after the picture Too Many Girls was released. Out of that connection came a sea change in American popular entertainment: I Love Lucy and Desilu Productions, the former the most important sitcom of early TV, the latter one of its most important production companies.

Rah-rah college musicals were the fashion on Broadway in the late thirties and Too Many Girls was one of them. The show starred Marcy Wescott, Richard Kollmar, Desi Arnaz, and Eddie Bracken and was directed by George Abbott. Pottowatomie College in Stopgap, NM, is the setting where Wescott's character, Connie, is a wealthy but ditsy coed whose father is a rich Pottowatomie grad. When Connie decides to attend, it's not, however, because her father went there so much as the fact that her latest heart throb, an older, sophisticated British novelist, lives nearby. She wants to say to him, "You're Nearer," though the song with that title was not included in the Broadway production. Her father is pleased with her choice of college but suspicious of her motives and decides to hire four Ivy League football stars to secretly accompany her to protect his daughter as well as his interests. The bodyguards apparently enroll in the college because they join the football team improving it beyond anything Pottowatomie has ever known. Hence the following sequence of events takes place: The team becomes terrific; one of the bodyguards (Clint Kelley/Richard Kollmar) falls for Connie and she for him until she discovers he's working for her father; the bodyguards leave the team; the team is no longer terrific; the bodyguards return to the team, and, not surprisingly, everything works out.

"Love Never Went to College" is one of the lesser known but nevertheless brilliant Rodgers and Hart songs from Too Many Girls (1939) where it was sung on Broadway by Marcy Westcott and Richard Kollmar and in the 1940 movie by Frances Langford. Here it is performed by Frederica Von Stade

The song "You're Nearer" is not even in the Broadway show having been written later (in October, 1940) specifically for the movie version of Too Many Girls. "You're Nearer" did, however, appear in a stage production of Too Many Girls when it replaced the song "My Prince" in the post Broadway touring company. It was sung in the touring company by Anne Francine and Marie Nash.

By the time Too Many Girls reached the screen in 1940, Lucille Ball had replaced Marcy Wescott, Richard Carlson had come in for Richard Kollmar, Anne Miller was added to the cast as Pepe the dancing Latina, and Van Johnson, very early in his Hollywood career, was a featured member of the chorus. Desi continued to play Manuelito, one of the Ivy League bodyguards, who, although he's from Argentina, is, without explanation, an all American caliber halfback and bongo player. Another change is, as mentioned above, the addition of the song "You're Nearer" (newly written by Rodgers and Hart) and added to the score for the film, where it is sung by Trudy Erwin dubbing Lucille Ball. The movie is only memorable because it was on its set that Lucy first met Desi* and, of course, for the Rodgers and Hart songs, especially the two songs that became standards: "You're Nearer" and "I Didn't Know What Time It Was."

From the 1940 movie "Too Many Girls," Lucille Ball,
dubbed by Trudy Erwin, performs "You're Nearer" --
with clips of the real life Lucy/Desi romance spliced in. (The couple met
on the set for the film and married one month after it opened.)

It was unfortunate that the once popular film was for the most part invisible before its release on video-cassette in 2001, since it offered the most faithful contemporary example of a Rodgers and Hart score, with seven songs retained from the show and a new gem, "You're Nearer" expressly written for the new medium (Block, pp. 87-88) .

He adds, in his Richard Rodgers Reader, that Too Many Girls the movie "was closer to a photographed play than a film adaptation" with more of the songs from the show retained than in any other movie based on a Rodgers and Hart show (pp. 75-76).

He also notes that despite Rodgers and Hart adding this "new gem" ("You're Nearer") to the score, the offensive titles of songs carried over from Broadway like "Spic and Spanish" and (referring to Manhattan) "Give It Back to the Indians" doomed the movie for later generation audiences -- this despite the presence of wonderful songs like "Love Never Went to College" (Listen above), "I Like to Recognize the Tune," and "I Didn't Know What Time It was."

Mel Tormé with The Marty Paich Dek-Tette (1956)
perform "I Like to Recognize the Tune"
by Rodgers and Hart from their 1939 show Too Many Girls.

Lorenz Hart's sister Dorothy Hart in her memoir of her brother concisely states, "'Too Many Girls' was a fun, happy show, rather than a distinguished one." One of the reasons for the "fun, happy" quality was the debut of Desi Arnaz on Broadway. She goes on to note that she had had always thought of her brother Larry as "the good-luck charm in the Desi Arnaz-Lucille Ball super-romance" and, she continues, "Larry informed me once that he was to stand up for Lucy and Desi at their marriage (which took place in Connecticut one week after the movie opened. But, years later, Lucy told me that Larry never showed up. It seems the ceremony was too early for him, and he didn't get up in time" (p. 142). Before the show Too Many Girls was cast, Desi was "a regular" at the Harts', who were very social people, and after Desi achieved fame and fortune neither he nor his mother ever forgot that the Harts were instrumental in getting him his start.

Dorothy Hart and
Robert Kimball (Eds.),
The Complete Lyrics
of Lorenz Hart.
New York: Knoph, 1986;
Da Capo Press expanded, paper bound, edition 1995.

A "list song" is a song whose overriding impression is created by a lyric that is mostly a list of examples supporting the major premise of the song. For example Cole Porter's "You're the Top" supports its title's claim that the "you" of the song is the best (top) by comparing it to a list of other bests in their respective categories: "You're the top! / You're the Coliseum. / You're the top! / You're the Louvre Museum" --ad infinitum.

In "You're Nearer," the list is of two items that are very, very near to each other in order to illustrate the closeness of the singer to his or her beloved: Metaphorical nearness is crucial in the case of the singer and his loved one because, as the singer states in the verse, "The miles lie between us, / But your fingers touch my own /You're never far away from me / For you're too much my own." How close is he/she? Hyperbole serves to make the point: "Nearer / than my head is to my pillow / Nearer / than the wind is to the willow. . . . / Nearer than the Ivy to the wall is. / Nearer / than winter to the fall is."

The list is not too long but clearly the spaces between the items that are near to each other are essentially non-existent, suggesting that two beings that are in themselves very different from one another compensate for their differences through their closeness. It's a simple, lovely idea that Hart has executed beautifully. The cause of their closeness is how much he/she loves her/him.

You're nearer, For I love you so.

In Gary Marmorstein's comments on "Your Nearer," he makes the point that of the various additions that distinguish the film Too Many Girls from the show (of the same title) on which it is based, "the most important change was the addition of Rodgers and Hart's "You're Nearer."

"You're Nearer," sings Trudy Erwin (dubbing Lucille Ball) to a faraway former boyfriend, Than my head is to my pillow, Nearer Than the Wind is to the Willow, Dearer Than the rain is to the earth below, Precious as the sun is to the things that grow. The first time its sung [Marmorstein writes] every guy in earshot gets mooney over Consuelo/Connie. Later when Consuelo and Carlson are on the outs, each reprises the song alone.

Marmorstein's point is the lyric works so well because "the love object is nowhere nearby; its metaphoric intimacy is conveyed by images of only a few inseparable pairs and must have influenced Dorothy Fields when she was writing the lyric for, 'Close as Pages in a Book'" for the 1945 Broadway show Up in Central Park.

(Also see the video above, a pastiche of the scene from Too Many Girls in which Ball, dubbed by Erwin, performs "You're Nearer") combined with snap shots of the real-life Lucy/Desi romance.)

• Lucille Ball/Trudy Erwin: AfterTheWind
• Dena DeRose: sasa. top

Notes

• For a complete listing of songs used in the original production of the Broadway show, see IBDB song list .
• For a complete listing of songs used in the movie, see IMDB Soundtrack .
• Too Many Girls (the movie) at Amazon
• Frederica Von Stade sings "Love Never Went to College" accompanied by the London Symphony, 1993
• Geoffrey Block, Richard Rodgers , New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003
• Geoffrey Block, Ed. The Richard Rodgers Reader . New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Geoffrey Block makes several significant points about the movie Too Many Girls for which "You're Nearer" was written:
• Note: Lucy's character's love interest in the movie was not Desi's character; rather she was paired with Richard Carlson.
• The authoritative lyric for "You're Nearer" can be found in
• Click here to read the lyrics for "You're Nearer" including the the verse .
• Listen to Corey Saunders sing the lyric (with verse) as written:
• Corey Saunders sings "You're Nearer, including the verse, at The Vermont, Los Angeles, c. 2010
• Other tracks featured on this page that include the verse: Mabel Mercer ; Annie Ross ; Dena DeRose .

Cite this page: "You're Nearer": Song History, Commentary, Discography, Performances on Video, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songs/x-y-z/youre_nearer.html