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 Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
i

11:51:58.
The Complete Lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner
 Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
ii

11:51:58.
 iii

The Complete Lyrics

of Alan Jay Lerner
Edited with annotations by Dominic McHugh and Amy Asch
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

11:52:41.
 iv

1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Names: Lerner, Alan Jay, 1918–1986. | McHugh, Dominic. | Asch, Amy.
Title: The complete lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner / edited with annotations by
Dominic McHugh and Amy Asch.
Other titles: Lyrics
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2018] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017019918 | ISBN 9780190646738 (cloth : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780190646752 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Musicals—Excerpts—Librettos. | Songs—Texts.
Classification: LCC ML56.4 .L332 2018 | DDC 782.1/40268—dc23
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019918

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

11:52:41.
 v

To our beloved friend,

Mark Eden Horowitz,
With love and thanks for all you do for musical theater and for us
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

11:52:41.
 Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
vi

11:52:41.
 vi

Contents
Foreword by Sheldon Harnick ix
Introduction by Sir Cameron Mackintosh xi
Editors’ Introduction xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
Chronology xix

1. Lerner Before Broadway, 1934–​1941 1

2. What’s Up (1943) 11
3. The Day Before Spring (1945) 25
4. Brigadoon (1947) 51
5. Love Life (1948) 73
6. Royal Wedding (1951) 129
7. Paint Your Wagon (1951) 141
8. Huckleberry Finn (1951–​1953, Unproduced) 189
9. My Fair Lady (1956) 201
10. Gigi (1958) 241
11. Camelot (1960) 287
12. On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1965) 323
13. Coco (1969) 359
14. Lolita, My Love (1971) 389
15. The Little Prince (1974) 427
16. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (1976) 443
17. Carmelina (1979) 529
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

18. Dance a Little Closer (1983) 553

19. My Man Godfrey (1984–​1985, Unproduced) 579
20. Miscellaneous 587

Bibliography 591
Credits 595
Index 597

11:52:41.
 Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
vi

11:52:41.
 ix

Foreword
By Sheldon Harnick

Lyricists (such as myself), who write for the musical theater, try to create songs which will not only serve the
character who sings them and the dramatic situation in which they’re sung but will also be comprehensible
and enjoyable when taken out of context. Because Alan Jay Lerner was a skilled playwright, as well as a lyr-
icist, his lyrics are particularly appropriate for the characters who sing them. And because he was a skilled
lyricist as well as a playwright, his films and stage musicals always contain a number of what my publisher
called “stand-​alone” songs—​that is, songs which can be performed outside of the shows for which they were
written. As you will discover while perusing the lyrics in this collection, Lerner was a man of great intelli-
gence and sophistication. His frame of reference was both wide and comprehensive, which imbued his lyrics
with unusual richness.
Collections, such as this, are invaluable because much of the work of theater lyricists, alas, remains unavail-
able and unknown even to aficionados of musical theater. This is because musicals are so expensive to produce
that productions of a lyricist’s less successful musicals tend to be, for the most part, few and far between. And,
regrettably, some of a writer’s best and most interesting work is to be found in shows which are not strong
enough to receive many (if any!) productions. (Happily, we are able to rent the films for which Lerner provided
lyrics.)
I first encountered Lerner’s work in a summer stock production of Brigadoon. As an aspiring lyricist, I found
the poetic and dramatic quality of his lyrics deeply satisfying. That first impression was soon confirmed when
I saw the film Royal Wedding, for which he had written the score with Burton Lane. I thought (and still think)
that “Too Late Now” was one of the most beautiful songs I had ever heard, while “You’re All the World to Me”
was one of the most engaging.
Then, five years later, along came My Fair Lady. By the time I saw it, there had been so much publicity about
it that I was prepared to see a very elegant, highly sophisticated show. (It more than lived up to its advance
publicity.) Later, I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with Lerner. The conductor Maurice Levine, who
was producing musical programs for the 92nd Street YMHA, had arranged for a series of radio interviews to
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

promote the programs, so I was in a car with Lerner, traveling from broadcast to broadcast. By the end of the
afternoon, I understood why so many women had fallen in love with him. When you were with him you were
the only person in the world. He was so bright and lavished such attention on you that it was quite seductive.
In my estimation, Alan Jay Lerner was a true poet. He had a highly developed sensitivity regarding words
and he was exceptionally intelligent and imaginative. The combination of the lovely ideas he had and the
lovely words with which he clothed them made for unusually lovely songs.

  ix

11:52:41.
 Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
x

11:52:41.
 xi

Introduction
By Sir Cameron Mackintosh

For my sixteenth birthday I was lucky enough to be taken to the last night of the original run of My Fair Lady
at London’s legendary Theatre Royal Drury Lane, my third visit to this brilliant musical. I managed to gate
crash the post show party in the theatre and at 2:00 a.m. literally danced my way across an empty cobbled
Covent Garden Market and St Paul’s Church on the arm of the actor playing Alfred P. Doolittle to try and find
my rather anxious parents in a nearby restaurant, who by then thought I’d been kidnapped.
In a way I had—​but by Alan Jay Lerner and Fritz Loewe. I was dizzy with the wit, words, and music of this
masterful collaboration. Even before seeing My Fair Lady, Gigi had cast its spell on me in the cinema. By then
I’d already set my heart on being a producer of musicals, and indeed started my career as a stagehand and
cleaner at the “Lane” less than three years later on another of their great shows, Camelot.
Every career needs a little bit of luck and I had the huge luck to meet Alan in the early 1970s when I was
producing one of my first original musicals The Card, based on the Arnold Bennett novel—​we became imme-
diate friends. He asked me how The Card was going at the box office as it had received quite good reviews—​I
told him, “not bad, but the problem was some weeks it made a little money and other weeks it lost money.”
“Ah,” said Alan, “a succès d’estime.”
“What’s that?” said I.
“A success that runs out of steam.” Alan replied, with rapier speed.
Over lunches, dinners, and very nice wine, in his disarmingly charming way he taught me so much about
the use of language and construction of songs so that they would effortlessly flow in and out of a scene.
One day, in 1978 when he was directing my first London revival of My Fair Lady, I was asking him why the
underscore of “Rain in Spain” started where it did and he said “because it has to. If you play the scene at
the right pace then it inevitably has to go into song.” He explained to me why the lyric of Eliza’s great aria
“I Could Have Danced All Night” has so many repeated phrases—​“It’s because Eliza has only just learned to
pronounce properly through constant repetition over many weeks so she couldn’t possibly suddenly become
fluent in posh English.” Alan always felt slightly frustrated that the song needed such a deceptively simple
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

lyric where it would be wrong to do anything clever.

Being a friend of Alan’s was a great gift so I was delighted that I was able to slightly return the favour by
introducing him to another fair lady—​the Eliza of that production, Liz Robertson, who became Alan’s much
loved last wife until he died far too young at 67 in 1986. Four years before that, I had been brought a French
concept album of a musical based on Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. Alan—​who, being the only “American in
Paris” that I knew, ​spoke French and English and was now living in London—​was the first person I played
it to, alongside Liz, literally the same day I listened to it, hoping he might be interested in writing the lyrics.
They both thought it was wonderful and Alan urged me to do it but felt it needed a more colloquial style for
the mostly earthy characters—​“I write shows about people’s dreams.” Shortly after this, tragically he dis-
covered he had cancer, a reason he also had to turn down working with Andrew Lloyd Webber and me on The

  xi

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 xi

Phantom of the Opera. But Alan lived long enough to come to a very early preview of Les Miz at the Barbican
London, when the show was still nearly four hours long and considered likely to be a disaster by many. He
strode across the foyer during the interval and said, “See, I was right Dear Boy. You owe me lunch!”
As I write this, I vividly see that delightful smile and mischievous face, those chewed fingernails which
grasped the pens that have written some of the most flawless and brilliant lyrics that have ever been writ-
ten and I hear again that elegant waspish voice making another quick-​witted and often hilarious naughty
remark—​devastatingly accurate rather than malicious.
I feel so lucky to have shared the street where he lived and, having reminisced far too much, commend
Oxford University Press for bringing us this unique collection of Alan’s work—​including material that was
cut “out of town”—​brilliantly and painstakingly researched by Dominic McHugh and Amy Asch. This treas-
ure trove of lyrics is illuminated with fascinating insights and stories of how these great musicals were put
together from the page to the stage. For anyone interested in the musical theatre, the complete lyrics of Alan
Jay Lerner will have you entranced all night and still have you begging for more.
Cameron Mackintosh
June 2017
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

xii | Introduction

11:52:41.
 xi

Editors’ Introduction
In Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1959 thriller North By Northwest, the protagonist Roger Thornhill (played by
Cary Grant) is captured and forced to consume quantities of bourbon by a spy and his henchmen, who have
mistaken him for someone else. In a drunken state, Thornhill starts to sing “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her
Face” (replacing the last two words with “my bourbon”) from My Fair Lady. By the late 1950s, My Fair Lady
was so pervasive in American culture that it would have been no surprise to audiences to hear that song com-
ing from Grant’s lips. It was in nearly everyone’s head, nearly all of the time, thanks to the popularity of the
original Broadway cast album—​which was the second biggest selling album of the decade—​not to mention
the dozens of cover versions of the songs that had been made by the biggest pop stars of the day, including
Frank Sinatra and Doris Day. “It’s no My Fair Lady” became a phrase common in theatrical parlance for years
to come, as critics and the public at large acknowledged the degree to which it had become a benchmark for
intelligent, inventive, emotional musical theater.
Even if Alan Jay Lerner had never written another song lyric in his life, his name would undoubtedly have been
important in the history of the Broadway and Hollywood musical because of My Fair Lady alone. Yet it’s clear from
leafing through the pages of this book that the quantity and range of his contribution to the development of the
musical was colossal. He wrote musicals based on real life (Coco) and fantasy (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever);
musical comedies (Carmelina), literary adaptations (Gigi), grand sagas (Paint Your Wagon), and intimate romances
(The Day Before Spring); contemporary stories (Lolita, My Love) and timeless legends (Camelot). Aside from the hits
from My Fair Lady, his songs include “Almost Like Being in Love,” “The Heather on the Hill,” “Thank Heaven for
Little Girls,” “Wand’rin’ Star,” “They Call The Wind Maria,” and “If Ever I Would Leave You,” to name but a few.
Lerner’s career also encompassed an extraordinary series of composer collaborators, perhaps the most dis-
tinguished of any lyricist in Broadway history. As well as his formidable partnership with Frederick Loewe,
he also wrote songs with Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Weill, John Barry, Burton Lane, Charles Strouse, Arthur
Schwartz, Richard Rodgers, Michel Legrand, and Gerard Kenny, and discussed projects with Jule Styne,
Hoagy Carmichael and Andrew Lloyd Webber (with whom he was to have written The Phantom of the Opera).
Indeed, he was enormously respected by his colleagues: Harold Arlen, composer of The Wizard of Oz, wrote
him a letter to say that “I’ve wanted to write to you—​oh, so often—​to let you know how good it’s made me
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

feel to follow yours and Fritz’s work . . . I must tell you it’s artistically healthy to know you’re on the scene—​
plowing away, and I hope, most of the time, joyously.”1
Lerner really cared about the profession and his craft, and in the mid-​1970s he started to present a ser-
ies of occasional talks on his career. The transcript of one of them—​held in his papers at the Library of
Congress2—​includes the following list of ideas about lyric writing that he liked to espouse in his own work:

1) Only write theatrical lyrics.

2) Why it is written, how it is written.

1 Letter from Harold Arlen to Alan Jay Lerner, April 4, 1960, LC-​ALC (Alan Jay Lerner Collection, Library of Congress).
2 Source: LC-​ALC.

  xiii

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 xvi

3) Theater is popular music—​should be both popular and music—​the best lives on.
4) No avant garde music.
5) Purpose of a lyric in a play.
6) Like to write lyrics to music.
7) Light verse vs. folk.
a) Brigadoon
b) Paint Your Wagon
c) Sullivan, Lewis Carroll, Nash, Hofferstein, Hart, Porter, Gershwin
d) Hammerstein—​folk once removed.
e) Carmen . . . Puccini
8) The rules
a) Sounds—​vowels and certain notes, etc
b) Lyrical phrase matching musical phrase—​patter
9) Problems in musical theater today—​more subject matter than music.
10) Personal idiosyncrasies—​“S.”
11) Things I like to write about.
12) Hours of writing—​hypnotized.

By this point in his career, Lerner started to feel that he knew what he was doing and, right or wrong, had
a framework within which to operate as a lyricist. Nevertheless, he also freely admitted that writing lyrics
could be painful. In an article titled “The Rhymes That Try Men’s Souls,”3 he described the process of writing
the title song for On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1965):
I worked on it for two weeks and got nowhere. Finally I decided that every morning I would devote two or
three hours to it and then put it away and get on with the rest of the writing. It was eight months before
I finally had a lyric that satisfied me. The first few lines I had from the beginning because they contained
the kernel of the idea:

On a clear day
Rise and look around you
And you’ll see who you are.

But after that the fumbling and stumbling began. For a while the next four lines went:

On a clear day
Would the news astound you
That the flame burning in you
Outshines every star.
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Aside from being boring, clumsy and unimaginative, it does not even sing well. Then:

On a clear day
Miracles surround you
And among all these wonders
You shine like a star.

Boring. Clumsy. Unimaginative. At last it grew into its final version:

3 Alan Jay Lerner, “The Rhymes That Try Men’s Souls,” TV Guide, August 1979. Quoted from a typed draft in LC-​ALC.

xiv | Editors’ Introduction

11:52:41.
 xv

On a clear day
How it will astound you
That the glow of your being
Outshines every star.

Eight months for that? No matter how successful a song may be, and that one, fortunately for me, was, I do not
believe any lyric is worth eight months.

Yet the vast majority of Lerner’s lyrics were indeed the result of many weeks and months of drafting
and rewriting. He was nothing if not self-​critical; in a memorable comment from his memoir The Street
Where I Live, he confessed that the line “Why all at once my heart took flight” (from his My Fair Lady hit
“I Could Have Danced All Night”) made him cringe so much as to give him “cardiac arrest.”4 It has not
perhaps been appreciated quite how hard Lerner worked to get it right, and it has been a priority for us
to reveal the inner workings of his creative mind. In the spirit of Lerner’s article about the process of
writing “On a Clear Day,” in this book we decided to preserve a good sampling of alternate versions of
his lyrics where they have survived. In each chapter, we have tried to present the Broadway version of
the show as the primary text and have augmented it in footnotes with earlier and later versions where
they exist (e.g., rehearsal versions of the shows, or new lyrics added to a movie adaptation). The wider
implication of the book, therefore, is to engage with the idea of the instability of the Broadway text,
rather than present an “authorized” or “definitive” version of each lyric. Editorially, we have intervened
as little as possible, the only issue being Lerner’s inconsistent approach to punctuation; often his own
copies of his lyrics contain no punctuation at all, and it is quite common for different published versions
of the same musical (e.g., the British and American editions of My Fair Lady) to have quite different
punctuation, leaving us to decide how to present some of his songs.
In a couple of instances, it has been very difficult to track down enough sources to do a musical complete
justice. In particular, we could not locate a Broadway script for What’s Up (1943), which means the book is
missing two lyrics from this show (“From the Chimney to the Cellar” and “Love Is a Step Ahead of Me”). We
were also sad not to be able to locate Lerner’s materials for Life of the Party (1942), a musical on which he
worked with Frederick Loewe mainly as book writer, but for which he also added some lyrics. Nor could we
find three of the songs from Fair Enough (1939), the second of Lerner’s Hasty Pudding shows, which he wrote
as a student at Harvard. The other particularly sad omission from the book is the song “Face to Face,” written
for Camelot (in which it was sung in Toronto and Boston by Julie Andrews as Guenevere) and cut just before
the Broadway opening; after years of hunting, including approaching Dame Julie herself, we could not track
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

it down.
Nevertheless, the volume presents by far the most extensive collection of Lerner’s lyrics ever published,
going beyond Benny Green’s earlier volume A Hymn to Him in its scope. Here for the first time are songs from
Lerner’s student musical So Proudly We Hail! (1938), for which he wrote music and lyrics, as well as the lyrics
for the unproduced movie Huckleberry Finn (1951–​1953), which he wrote with Burton Lane. Every chapter
contains something new or unfamiliar, ranging from the complete lyrics to the early Lerner and Loewe musi-
cal The Day Before Spring (1945) to songs cut from My Fair Lady before opening night. At his own admission,
not every lyric he wrote was a masterpiece, but the street where he lived provided a home for the creation
of many of the twentieth century’s most beautiful, moving, and enduring popular songs. The last point was

4 Lerner, The Street Where I Live, 86.

Editors’ Introduction | xv

11:52:41.
 xvi

of particular importance to him, as he confessed: “It is rather pleasant to know that if your songs are being
played and sung when you are not around, it is difficult for people to forget you.”5 On the eve of his centenary,
we hope this bumper collection of his songs helps another generation of musical theater lovers to remember
him well.
Dominic McHugh
Amy Asch
January 2017
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

5 Lerner, “The Rhymes That Try Men’s Souls,” 2.

xvi | Editors’ Introduction

11:52:41.
 xvi

Acknowledgments
This book has been a huge undertaking for all involved, and we are particularly grateful to our editor at
Oxford, Norm Hirschy, for having faith in such a complex and expensive project. Norm’s enthusiasm and
energy helped to bring everything together, and we thank both him and his assistant Lauralee Yeary for all
their help. We also offer thanks to Alphonsa James and colleagues at NewGen for their hard work in typeset-
ting the book.
Our sincere thanks also go to Loren Plotkin, David Grossberg, Liz Robertson, Liza Lerner, and the other
Lerner heirs for their support, not least in organizing the many permissions needed to reproduce Lerner’s
complete lyrics. Emily Altman’s support as President of the Frederick Loewe Foundation has also been vital
and is much appreciated.
The contributions of two figures have given this book a special connection to Lerner and his world. It is
such an honor to include a Foreword by Sheldon Harnick and an Introduction by Sir Cameron Mackintosh to
help set the scene for the lyrics, and we cannot thank them enough for the time and care they have bestowed
on our behalf.
We also offer particular thanks to the writer and Lerner expert Erik Haagensen, who has been extraordi-
narily helpful and supportive throughout the process, and generously shared some of his research on Love
Life and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His detailed comments and advice have greatly enhanced the project.
Various publishers have been very helpful in organizing licenses for the lyrics contained in this book,
including Gabriel Morgan (Alfred Music), TJ Rubin (Imagem), Marie Carter (Leonard Bernstein), and Sean
Patrick Flahaven (formerly of Warner Chappell).
Many thanks are also due to Ron Mandelbaum at Photofest for helping us with illustrations.
As always, we have been lucky to find so much support from the various librarians and archivists we have
encountered during our research, including Ned Comstock (USC), Doug Reside (Billy Rose Theater Collection
at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts), Jennifer B. Lee (Columbia University Rare Book and
Manuscript Library), Dale Stinchcomb (Harvard Theatre Library), Richard Boursy (Gilmore Music Library,
Yale University), and Walter Zvonchenko (Library of Congress). As ever, Michael Feinstein has been gener-
ous with his assistance.
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Numerous other friends and colleagues have helped us along the way, including Vanessa Ashbee, Sam
Baltimore, Diana J. Bertolini, Danielle Birkett, Phil Birsh, Nick Bland, Larry Blank, Geoffrey Block, Ken
Bloom, Dorothy and Michael Bradley, Tracy and Darren Bryant, Andrew Buchman, Rexton Bunnett, Guy
Button, Fynn Byrhard, Ted Chapin, Lynn Christie, Loie Gardiner Clark, Elliot J. Cohen, Brad Connor, Patrick
Cusanelli, Cliff Eisen, Bill Everett, Ian Marshall Fisher, Rob Fisher, Marilyn Flitterman, Andrea Gray, Paul
Guinery, Ed Harsh, Patrick Hayward, Dean Irwin, Peggy Kampmeier, Pam Karr, Barry Kirk, Kim Kowalke,
Paul Laird, Henriette Louwerse, Jeffrey Magee, Matthew Malone, Nelly Miricioiu, Ben Moldave, Larry Moore,
Jeffrey Moss, George Nicholson, Richard C. Norton, Wes Parker, Stephen Pettitt, Ron Ramin, Sophie Redfern,
Hannah Robbins, Arthur Robinson, Marina Romani, Ben Sears, Anna Stevens, Laurie Stricks, Richard Tay,
Arlene and Roy Tomlinson, Joseph Weiss, Jonas Westover, and Jennifer Zwiebel.

  xvii

11:52:41.
 xvi

We also thank our families for their unending love and support, including Lawrence Broomfield, Gilly and
Larry McHugh, Sue and Terry Broomfield, Alistair McHugh, Natallia Anisko, and John Riley; Rhoda and
Roger Asch, Mark and Stephanie Asch, Meredith Asch, and Toby Moldave.
We are proud to dedicate this book to Mark Eden Horowitz of the Library of Congress. A master among
musical theater archivists, Mark has assisted the queries of hundreds of researchers during his time at the
Library, greatly enriching the work of scholars and performers in their quest to revisit the riches of Broadway’s
past. Mark is himself a formidable scholar whose published output includes the book Minor Details and Major
Decisions: Sondheim on Music, and his impressive stewardship of the Library’s musical theater collections is a
reflection of his thorough knowledge and deep understanding of them. Nevertheless, we are grateful most of
all for his loving friendship, and it is a pleasure to offer this small tribute in return for all he has done for us.
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

xviii | Acknowledgments

11:52:41.
 xi

Chronology

August 31, 1918 February 1946 November 12, 1951

Born in New York City MGM takes up option on screen Broadway opening of Paint Your
version of The Day Before Spring Wagon
September 1936
Arrives at Harvard October 1946 March 1952
Brigadoon announced to the press Begins first attempt at My Fair
March 29, 1938 Lady
Harvard premiere of So Proudly March 13, 1947
We Hail! Broadway opening of Brigadoon March 20, 1952
Wins Academy Award for
March 27, 1939 April 1947 screenplay of An American in Paris
Harvard premiere of Fair Enough Splits with Frederick Loewe
April 1952
October 1939 July 1947 Considers writing musical version
Announces The Little Dog Laughed Announces new collaboration of Casablanca with Loewe
(unproduced) with Kurt Weill
September 1952
October 8, 1942 October 7, 1948 Considers movie version of The
Premiere of Life of the Party in Broadway opening of Love Life Girl of the Golden West
Detroit
January 1949 October 1952
November 11, 1943 Starts to write Royal Wedding Abandons first attempt at My Fair
Broadway opening of What’s Up Lady; severs collaboration with
May 1950
Loewe
November 1944 Reunites with Loewe and starts
Begins work on The Day Before to write Paint Your Wagon February 1953
Spring Starts work on new songs for
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February 1951
movie version of Paint Your Wagon
June 1945 MGM buys screen rights to
with Arthur Schwartz
Starts to draft Brigadoon Brigadoon
March 1953
November 22, 1945 March 1951
Signs contract to write musical of
Broadway opening of The Day Premiere of Royal Wedding
Li’l Abner with Schwartz
Before Spring
October 1951
Premiere of An American in Paris

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11:52:41.
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October 1953 March 15, 1957 February 18, 1960

Starts writing screenplay of World premiere of songs Lerner elected President of
nonmusical Green Mansions for dedicated to Harvard, with music Dramatists Guild
MGM by Leonard Bernstein, at Carnegie
Hall April 18, 1960
November 1953 My Fair Lady receives premiere in
Ends collaboration with March 27, 1957 Moscow
Schwartz; Burton Lane takes over Revival of Brigadoon opens at City
as composer of Li’l Abner Center, New York October 1, 1960
First performance of Camelot in
December 1953 April 21, 1957 Toronto
Undertakes further work on My Fair Lady wins six Tony
Huckleberry Finn for MGM. Awards October 4, 1960
Production on movie of Brigadoon Hospitalized for bleeding ulcer
begins April 1957
Lerner moves to Paris to work on October 14, 1960
August 1954 Gigi Takes over direction of Camelot
Resumes work with Loewe on My
October 1957 December 3, 1960
Fair Lady; abandons Abner
Announces work on Father of the Broadway opening of Camelot
September 1954 Bride with Loewe
April 6, 1961
Premiere of movie version of
December 1957 Announces new collaboration
Brigadoon
Abandons work on Father of the with Richard Rodgers
April 1955 Bride
February 11, 1962
Plans musical adaptation of
April 1958 The Broadway of Lerner and Loewe
Saratoga Trunk
Loewe suffers heart attack and TV special is aired
March 15, 1956 cannot attend London premiere
September 30, 1962
Broadway opening of My Fair of My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady closes on Broadway
Lady
May 15, 1958
October 1962
April 1956 Gigi receives world premiere
Announces details of I Picked
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Abandons Saratoga Trunk screening

A Daisy with Richard Rodgers
May 1956 May 1958
Early 1963
Begins work on screenplay of Gigi Lerner and Loewe consider
Works on screenplay of My Fair
without Loewe musical version of Life with Father
Lady
February 1957 February 1959
Loewe agrees to write score for Lerner and Loewe start work on
Gigi. Lerner directs rehearsals of Camelot
National Tour of My Fair Lady

xx | Chronology

11:52:41.
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May 23, 1963 1968 November 1973

Produces birthday celebration Writes new songs with Previn for Starts to write 1600 Pennsylvania
for President Kennedy at the movie of Paint Your Wagon and Avenue with Bernstein
Waldorf-​Astoria screenplay of On a Clear Day for
Barbra Streisand November 13, 1973
July 1963 Broadway opening of Gigi
Collapse of collaboration with February 1969
Rodgers; Burton Lane takes over Celebrates twenty-​five years April 11, 1974
as composer of On a Clear Day in show business at the Premiere of City Center show
Waldorf-​Astoria Music! Music! Music! for which
January 1964 Lerner wrote some “footnotes”
Agrees to write screenplay and October 15, 1969
lyrics for Doctor Doolittle Premiere of Paint Your Wagon April 21, 1974
movie Lerner and Loewe win Tony
October 1964 Award for Best Score for Gigi
My Fair Lady movie is released to December 18, 1969
cinemas Broadway opening of Coco December 1974
The Little Prince is released
December 1964 June 17, 1970
My Fair Lady wins New York Film Movie of On a Clear Day opens in 1975
Critics’ Award cinemas Extensive work on 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue
October 17, 1965 November 1970
Broadway opening of On a Clear Announces stage adaptation of March 25, 1976
Day You Can See Forever Lolita with music by John Barry Anniversary revival of My Fair
Lady opens on Broadway
January 1966 March 23, 1971
Announces collaboration with Lolita, My Love opens in Boston May 4, 1976
Andre Previn on Coco tryout, but closes before reaching Broadway opening of 1600
Broadway Pennsylvania Avenue
February 27, 1966
Tribute to Lerner broadcast September 1971 Fall 1976
on The Bell Telephone Hour. Lerner and Loewe reunite to Work begins on Carmelina
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Preproduction on movie of write score for The Little Prince

January 1977
Camelot begins in the same and revision of Gigi for the stage
Lerner appears at musical theater
month
Early 1973 festival in Sydney, Australia and
August 1966 Filming of The Little Prince takes starts work on memoir The Street
Visits Coco Chanel in Paris to place Where I Live
discuss Coco
May 15, 1973 March 1977
October 1967 Pre-​Broadway tour of Gigi opens Announces Carmelina to the press
Charity premiere of Camelot film in San Francisco
in New York

Chronology | xxi

11:52:41.
 xxi

Fall 1978 August 18, 1981 February 15, 1985

Publication of The Street Where Harrison revival of My Fair Lady Premiere of lullaby for Prince
I Live opens on Broadway Harry, “Brocades and Coronets,”
with music by Gerard Kenny
April 8, 1979 February 1982
Broadway opening of Carmelina Decides to direct Dance a Little March 1985
Closer My Man Godfrey announced to
May 14, 1979 the press
Tribute to Lerner and Loewe at May 11, 1983
Museum of the City of New York Broadway opening of Dance a April 1985
Little Closer Completes some initial work on
Summer 1979 Teddy and Alice
Briefly discusses collaboration August 1983
with Michel Legrand on The Involved in a car accident; spends September 17, 1985
Mountains of Peru the rest of the year researching Premiere of revised stage version
a history of the musical theater of Gigi in London
November 1979 (The Musical Theatre: A Celebration
Major revival of My Fair Lady in is published posthumously in December 8, 1985
London, with direction by Lerner 1986 [New York:McGraw Hill]) Receives Kennedy Center Honors
award with Loewe
July 8, 1980 Summer 1984
New York revival of Camelot Begins work on My Man Godfrey January 1986
with Gerard Kenny Discusses collaboration with
October 16, 1980 Andrew Lloyd Webber on The
City Center revival of Brigadoon October 1984 Phantom of the Opera
Starts to revise Gigi for London
April 1981 March 31, 1986
stage premiere
Begins work on film adaptation Withdraws from Phantom after
of The Merry Widow and briefly January 1985 diagnosis of cancer
works on Copperfield Hands over Carmelina revisions to
Joseph Stein and continues work June 14, 1986
May 1981 Dies in New York
on Gigi
Announces Dance a Little Closer,
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with Charles Strouse

xxii | Chronology

11:52:41.
 Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
xxi

11:52:41.
The Complete Lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner
 Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
xvi

11:52:41.
Figure 1.1 Alan Jay Lerner. (Credit: Photofest)
 1

1 Lerner Before Broadway, 1934–​1941

This chapter brings together songs written by Lerner before his Broadway collaboration with Frederick
Loewe got underway. It consists mainly of lyrics from the two Hasty Pudding shows to which he con-
tributed during his time at Harvard University: So Proudly We Hail! (1938), a satire on cafe culture that
involved Hitler and Mussolini, and Fair Enough (1939), which was about the World’s Fair. The college songs
are preceded by the Choate School fight song, which Lerner wrote when he was sixteen. After the college
numbers are other songs of the late 1930s and early 1940s, whose purpose is not as clear. Unless other-
wise noted, the songs in this chapter all have both words and music by Lerner.

Choate Football Song

Written with another student called Carlton Tobey, the “Choate Football Song”1 was probably created in
1934, when Lerner was sixteen years old. He was at the Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut, where
his fellow students included the future President John F. Kennedy. The song itself is trivial, of course, but as
Lerner’s earliest surviving lyric it is important.

Oh, let us give a cheer for Choate today; So let us prove that we can lead the way,
We’ve the fighting spirit that will win the fray. We’ve the might to win.
Gold and Blue, victorious ever, We’ve the fight to win.
Knows the way to play. Victory belongs to Choate! Choate! Choate!
A rousing cheer’s in order for the team
Choate will reign supreme;
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From So Proudly We Hail! (1938)

Lerner’s first attempt at writing a musical, So Proudly We Hail!, was described in a review as “a satire on Café
Society with implications involving Mussolini, Hitler, and Roosevelt and their respective countries, and the
small nation of Cafeteria, bounded by Central Park East and 42nd street.”2 The show was one of the famed
annual Hasty Pudding Theatricals, which Lerner reveled in making contributions to. Not only did he write
both the words and music to several songs, he also played a Singing Mannequin and a Chorus Girl in the pro-
duction (it was a male-​only club).

1 Source: lyric sheet from the Alan Jay Lerner Collection, Library of Congress.
2 Quoted in McHugh, Alan Jay Lerner, 4.

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11:52:41.
 2

Livin’ the Life

“Livin’ the Life”3 was the show’s opening number, and it was a typical 1920s-​style upbeat curtain-​raiser. In
the first quatrain in particular, one can see the influence of writers such as Ira Gershwin, one of the leading
lyricists of Lerner’s youth who tended in that period to project optimism as the overriding sentiment of the
musical comedy form.

Ken and Chorus: Gotta get your white tie, tails and topper
Leave your worries behind you. And start in going to town.
Let the sunshine break through. You can make this world a walloper
Don’t let cares ever find you; If you do it up brown.
Here’s the only thing for you to do:
It will get you, it will set you
Singing, dancing, wine, romancing now, Up on top of the world,
Livin’ the life. Livin’ the life.
Make your laughter hit the rafter now,
Livin’ the life.

Something New for a Change

“Something New for a Change”4 was written by Lerner for himself to sing as the Singing Mannequin, backed
by the chorus. The number already shows some of the hallmarks of his style as a lyric writer, with its sense of
ennui anticipating Gaston’s “It’s a Bore” in Gigi.

Mannequin and Chorus: I’m tired of reading of eight-​year-​old brides;

I’m seeking something that’s new for a change. Of seeing pictures of old Ironsides.
I’m tired of hearing of homes on the range; Our staff of crooners now makes me quite ill,
I’m sick of bank-​books that are in the red,5 I’m bored of movies by Cecil de Mille,
I don’t believe a word Congress has said,
I hate the way that they’re ending all vice,
I’m always hearing the President’s voice, I loathe the postmen who always ring twice,
I find no cause to be gay or rejoice, I only know that I want to arrange
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I only know that I want to arrange A thrill, something that’s new for a change.
A thrill, or something that’s new for a change.

3 Source: lead sheet from the copyright deposit, Library of Congress, dated October 22, 1937. Unless otherwise noted, the
sources for this chapter are all from the Library’s copyright deposit.
4 Source: lyric sheet from the Warner-​Chappell Collection, Library of Congress.
5 An alternative lyric sheet has two different lines here, the latter anticipating the “Domestic Champagne Waltz” from On
a Clear Day You Can See Forever:
I’m bored with parties that now seem inane,
I’m sick of drinking domestic champagne.

2 | The Complete Lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner

11:52:41.
 3

My Chance to Dream

Published by Chappell and Co.,6 “My Chance to Dream” was described in the show’s program as a “smash
ballad.” Musically, it has something of Jerome Kern’s line about it, without quite achieving his harmonic
sophistication. The lyric, too, is derivative, with its references to “trees and flow’rs and April show’rs.” Still,
it is a solid achievement, and it was one of only three songs (the other two were not by Lerner) from the pro-
duction to be published.

Ken and Joan: My love is yours for eternity.”

Some people may have their fun Oh, that’s my chance to dream.
In dancing and singing till one,
But I find my thrill in dreams, For I’m the kind
That’s when I’m happy, it seems. Who, time out of mind,
Lives in a world of my own,
When I hear a song, Just because I never have known
Of trees and flow’rs and April show’rs, When to reveal—​how I feel;
And think you’re whisp’ring “tonight is ours!”
Oh, that’s7 my chance to dream. I’ll still go along
And when it’s time for stars to shine,
When I think I hear I’ll throw my head back and say that I’m
You say to me “It’s plain to see So lucky with my chance to dream!

Man About Town

Although it was not chosen for publication, “Man About Town” is probably Lerner’s most interesting contri-
bution to So Proudly We Hail!8 Without having access to the script it is difficult to know exactly how it fits the
plot, but the storytelling and sense of progression from beginning to end are surprisingly well constructed,
with the poignant reference to the lonely “man about town” in the final stanza.

King and Chorus: He drinks quite a bit from morning till night,
He’s always at parties and dances and such, But never gets lit, he says that he never even
But frowns on romances, and says that for him ever was tight,
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he thinks they’re really too much, That’s the Man About Town!
That’s the Man About Town!
He’s very well known in New York,
At Tony’s, Morocco, and Stork,

6 Sources: sheet music published by Chappell and Co., 1939, and lyric sheet from the Warner-​Chappell Collection, Library
of Congress. The sheet music’s title is “Chance to Dream” but “My Chance to Dream” is the title on the typed lyric in the
Warner-​Chappell Collection.
7 The lyric in the source from the Warner-​Chappell Collection has been corrected by Lerner; the original line says: “That’s
when I get my chance to dream.”
8 Source: Warner-​Chappell Collection, Library of Congress.

Lerner Before Broadway, 1934–1941 | 3

11:52:41.
 4

And if on any bender there’s an extra girl found, But as years pass him by, and all’s said and done,
He’ll always be around. He’ll sit back and sigh without love and know
that he’s the loneliest one,
That’s your Man About Town!

From Fair Enough (1939)

From Me to You

Sadly, only two of Lerner’s five contributions to the next Hasty Pudding show, Fair Enough (1939), have sur-
vived.9 (The others are titled “Blame it on Chichita,” “Blue Ribbon Jury,” and “Fair Enough.”) Lerner’s abilities
had rapidly improved, and “From Me to You” is a very respectable 1930s love ballad, with simplicity and sin-
cerity replacing the cliches of some of his work in So Proudly We Hail!

Ned and Sheila: I’ve just felt my head reeling the funniest way
Don’t go, I’ve something more to declare; And Heaven has no ceiling since love bid good day.
Don’t go, I’ve got some feelings to air; From me to you,
I must confide something entre nous I’d like to have the right
Concerning me and you. To say and do
The things I wish I might.
From me to you I’ll offer you a heart as good as new
I’ll let a secret out; And say “It’s yours, from me to you.”
From me to you,
I’ve learned what love’s about.

Home Made Heaven

Both “From Me to You” and “Home Made Heaven” were published, and, like most of the songs in this chapter,
they featured both words and music by Lerner (though he unquestionably had help with the accompaniments,
which are credited to Richard Lewine). “Home Made Heaven” has a particularly attractive verse in duet form,
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where the protagonists Ned and Sheila converse about their dream to have a “home made heaven,” which was
Lerner’s take on the “cozy little cottage” trope of many other songs of the pre-​War period (e.g. “Tea for Two”).10

Ned: Sheila:
Didn’t you ever dream you owned a palace? Yes, and I dreamed that in my palace I’d find
Or were an Alice in Wonderland? The perfect right kind of wonderman.

9 The source for this lyric is the published sheet music.

10 Many thanks to Jeffrey Magee for sharing his ideas on the “cozy cottage” trope at the “Putting It Together” conference
at the University of Sheffield in May 2016.

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Ned: Sunlight that’s pouring through ev’ry

Well, darling, those things can happen today room, dear,
But not just in that fabulous way. Chasing away the gloom, dear,
We’ll have a home made heaven.
Times have changed and dreams are not what Though not gigantic, it’s so romantic,
they used to be; It’s living the perfect life;
So, here’s a palace “a la twentieth century.” Far from the city’s strife,
Just you and I, the moon and sky.
Street lights and noises of horns behind us
And with the chimes of the neighb’ring steeple,
And where no one can find us,
We’ll know we’re lucky people,
We’ll have a home made heaven.
We’ll have a home made heaven.

Miscellaneous
My First Night with You (1937)

Most of the songs in this section were found in the copyright deposit at the Library of Congress, where
Lerner submitted them in October 1937. It is likely that “My First Night with You” and the next three songs
were intended for use in a Hasty Pudding show or similar student musical, although their slightly generic
nature makes it difficult to place them with certainty.

Oh! My first night with you, Seemed to vanish from me.

I seemed to feel that it couldn’t be real, Then I heard a rumbling,
That first sight of you. My earth was tumbling,
I felt I knew at the start As the sunshine replaced rain.
I would lay at your feet My days were all boring,
Every quickening beat Till I was adoring.
Of my whole helpless heart. It was the first time that my heart was in flame.
Oh, my first night with you,
I wasn’t living And oh! My first night with you
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Until I was giving Came like the passion

That first night to you. That soon was to fashion
My whole life in you.
You were a vision to see. My love on you will I spend,
You changed gray into blue Make there never an end
And the cares that I knew To that heavenly first night with you.

Lerner Before Broadway, 1934–1941 | 5

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Then I’ll Forget You (1937)

“Then I’ll Forget You” contains at least one line (“When April show’rs have failed to bring flow’rs”) that was
reworked for the So Proudly We Hail song “My Chance to Dream.” It was perhaps the first of many times in
Lerner’s long career when he would reuse a successful idea from an unsuccessful song.

There are some things in life you know. When chapel bells stop their ringing,
Things that you never forget. I’ll forget you.
Happiness comes but only to go
Leaving you nothing but cause to regret. I never have the urge to go out dancing,
I never have the urge to hum a song,
And so it was meeting you, And when I know you’re with someone
Now there’s one thing I know is true: romancing,
It makes the days seem twice as long.
When leaves of brown don’t fall on the ground,
When morning comes without dew, When April show’rs have failed to bring flow’rs
When all the birds stop their singing, And winds don’t blow as they do,
I’ll forget you. The day my heart stops its beating,
I’ll forget you.
When clouds on high are tossed from the sky,
And heavens never seem blue,

You’re My Song (1937)

Music as a metaphor was a common device in the Broadway musical of the 1920s and 1930s, and Lerner was
following convention in writing “You’re My Song.” Again, this song is undistinguished in itself but important
as part of understanding Lerner’s development as a songwriter.

All through life I’ve loved the sound of music in You’re my song,
my ear, You’re the words complete, the rarest treat
Loved the sound of melodies ringing clear. I know of,
Though I never knew why You’re the thrill untold that won’t grow old they
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I appreciated song, call love.

Now I know the meaning, I learned it the day You’re my song.
you came along.
Since the very start,
You’re my song, The rhythm of my heart has been fast.
You’re the melodies in It’s not here for a day,
rhapsodies I know of, I know it’s here to stay, it will last,
You’re the harmonies from symphonies that Will last.
I love.
You’re my song. You’re my song,
You’re the world sublime I wish were mine,

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11:52:41.
 7

You know, dear, Because I feel when you’re here,

And I know it’s real You’re my song.

You’re Not My Type (1937)

“You’re Not My Type” is one of Lerner’s more old-​fashioned efforts. The lyric suggests 1920s musical comedy
without much attempt to respond to dramatic context. However, it has some amusing jokes and rhymes,
with the verse about “Crosby, Tibbett, and Jenny Lind” suggesting the influence of Lorenz Hart, who would
later become Lerner’s friend and mentor.

Gee, you’re swell! Gee, you’re grand! Like to go out dancing under Broadway’s bright
You’ve got everything to offer a man, lights.
But darling, things have gone awry. Like to go to Europe and see all of the sights.
How I hate leaving you, But who hogs all the blankets on those cold
But there’s nothing else for me to do. winter nights?
Oh, darling, don’t you see the reason why? You’re not my type.
Oh my!
I always liked the way you sing although it’s
Very fond of Crosby, Tibbett, and Jenny Lind, off key.
Hate to be in places where there’s noise and Like the way you smiled and said you knew you
there’s din, loved me.
But then you haven’t even finished “Gone with But then you told me that you’d voted for
the Wind”. Franklin D.
You’re not my type. You’re not my type.

We like to go to Florida and get nice and brown. So let’s call it a day.
Like to go to symphonies and operas in town. What’s there left us to say?
But then you say your fav’rite song’s “The Music Let’s part while we’ve a chance,
Goes Round.” And go search for another romance.
You’re not my type.
Liked the way you always see they’ve rugs on
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So it’s easy to see the floors.

That you’re not right for me. Liked the way that you object to slamming
Just those special things small of doors.
Make me feel that it’s no use at all. But where in heaven did you get that mother of
yours?
And you like the novels, plays, and poems I’ve read. You’re not my type.
Know I like to eat a lot and see I’m well fed.
But why do you persist in eating crackers in bed?
You’re not my type.

Lerner Before Broadway, 1934–1941 | 7

11:52:41.
 8

Evening at the Stork (c.1938)

Lerner was already starting to get his songs performed professionally by the time of his Hasty Pudding com-
positions.11 A column in the Columbia Daily Spectator on March 7, 1938 noted: “Ben Wells has promised us the
best tasting ‘Hasty Pudding’ to date . . . Alan (Harvard) Lerner who has music in that same ‘Show of He’s’ has a
swell song being Stork Clubbed by Bobby Parks’ swell band titled ‘An Evening at the Stork Club’ plenty Benny
Goodmanish . . . ”12 The Stork Club, which was open from 1929 to 1965, was one of New York’s most elite nightclubs.

Looking forward to an evening of enjoyment, Oo-​oh yes, let music fill the air.
For in picking out the places I’m no dud. Just some good romantic swing will answer my
I’ll be truckin’ along, prayer.
Making whoopee till dawn;
Spending an ev’ning at the Stork Club. Never felt before I wanted such enjoyment;
But tonight with ev’rything that’s gay I’ll rub.
This is gonna be my night for just enjoyment, Satan’s gone with the wind and a new
Ev’ry trouble in the world tonight I’ll snub. feeling’s in,
I’ll be going to town as the music goes round, Spending an ev’ning at the Stork Club.
Spending an ev’ning at the Stork Club.

Between Friends (1940)

One of Lerner’s few songs to be published before commencing his collaboration with Frederick Loewe,
“Between Friends” was written with Stanley Miller (one of the other lyricists of So Proudly We Hail!) and Ted
Straeter (a pianist and bandleader, who led the band and chorus on Kate Smith’s radio show from 1938 to
1943).13 It is professional rather than distinctive, but it is further evidence of Lerner’s apprenticeship, which
would soon lead to his Broadway career.

It’s a lovely night, Moon, though I’m in love and show it,
No romance in sight. Don’t tell the world you know it.
I’m a crazy loon, It’s just between friends.
Staring at the moon.
For I have no one to tell my story to, ’Cause maybe she has a heart that’s lonely,
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

And so I appeal to you. And there’s a chance if only

You let her know that I’m so very solitary.
Oh!
Moon, though you know what I’m thinking, Moon, please make her mine completely;
Don’t tell a soul, keep winking. Then disappear discreetly.
It’s just between friends. We’ll keep it just between friends.

11 Source: copyright files, LC; registered February 2, 1938.

12 “Lion About Town,” Columbia Daily Spectator, Vol. 61, no. 89, March 7, 1938. Accessed online at http://​spectatorarchive.library.
columbia.edu/​cgi-​bin/​columbia?a=d&d=cs19380307-​01.2.17&e=-​-​-​-​-​-​-​en-​20-​-​35012-​-​txt-​txIN-​columbia-​-​-​-​-​# on July 30, 2016.
13 The source for this lyric is the published sheet music from 1940.

8 | The Complete Lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner

11:52:41.
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New Yorkshire Pudding (c.1941)

In his memoir,14 Lerner recorded that his collaboration with Frederick Loewe began at the Lambs Club, when,
on the way to the men’s room, Loewe stopped to ask if Lerner wrote lyrics. The Lambs was a club for men in
the performing arts, though at the time they might not have been considered gentlemen. Their clubhouse
building on West 44th Street had amenities such as a bar, card room, dining room, and rooms for residents.
Lerner lived there at some points after college and often played cards there with Larry Hart. Members enter-
tained each other in revues called “Gambols.” The Lambs archive has programs15 from a handful of late 1930s
and early 1940s shows where Loewe is credited as pianist or composer and one where he played the role of
Chopin in a sketch where classical musicians asked “Who Has Stolen My Songs?” Loewe and Lerner were on
the same bill (but in separate sketches) in the Lincoln’s Birthday Gambol on February 9, 1941. Alan Lerner
(as he was billed) offered a madrigal titled “Lambshire Pudding” that was performed by eight singers and
staged by Arthur Pierson, who two years later was co-​author of Lerner and Loewe’s first Broadway produc-
tion, What’s Up. “Lambshire Pudding” has not been located, but an incomplete music manuscript in Lerner’s
hand, with the related title “New Yorkshire Pudding,”16 and also labeled a madrigal,17 contains this lyric.

When you are in New York It’s been said bingo’s dead.
You must do as New Yorkers do. We listen to the radio
[Ad lib] And to Barney’s we always go.
Use their talk [Ad lib]
In Old New York Dig, dig, dig
Put your mind to work
(Mind to work All the news that’s fit to print here.
Silly jerk) Fa-​la-​la-​la-​la etc.
There’s no sense being a silly jerk Ask the man who owns one
[Ad lib] Have no fear.

Fa-​la-​la-​la-​la etc.
We found LaGuardia is surely the best known
may’r alive It is fun to be a little queer.
Though people think that he looks like Mister We can always pass it off with
Five by Five. Fa-​la-​fa.19
There’s no more bingo at Loew’s
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

There’s no more bank nite18 at R.K.O.’s

14 Lerner, The Street Where I Live, 27. Lerner dates this conversation to August 1942, but they surely crossed paths in the
preceding year or two.
15 Box 94, Lambs Club Records, *T-​Mss 1976-​003, Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.
16 Box 22/​2, Lambs Club scores, Music Division, The New York Public Library.
17 Lerner returned to the comic madrigal in Love Life (1948).
18 This is Lerner’s spelling.
19 It’s clear that the song continues, but no further pages were found.

Lerner Before Broadway, 1934–1941 | 9

11:52:41.
 01
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Figure 2.1 Alan Jay Lerner (left) and Frederick Loewe. (Credit: Photofest)

11:52:41.
 1

2 What’s Up (1943)

Composer: Frederick Loewe.

Co-​librettist: Arthur Pierson.
Tryouts: Playhouse Theatre, Wilmington, Delaware: October 22–​23, 1943; Walnut Theatre, Philadelphia: ​
October 25–November 6, 1943.
Broadway run: National Theatre: November 11, 1943–​January 4, 1944; 63 performances.
Broadway credits: Book by Alan Jay Lerner and Arthur Pierson.1 Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. Music by
Frederick Loewe. Book Directed by Robert H. Gordon. Production Staged by George Balanchine.
Production Designed by Boris Aronson. Costumes by Grace Houston. Orchestrations by Van Cleave. Vocal
Arrangements by Bobby Tucker. Orchestra under the direction of Will Irwin. Presented by Mark Warnow.2
Broadway cast: Jimmy Savo (Rawa of Tanglinia), Johnny Morgan (Sgt. Moroney), Gloria Warren (Virginia
Miller), and, in order of appearance: Mary Roche (Jayne), Pat Marshall (Susan), Mitzi Perry (Eleanor), Lynn
Gardner (Margaret), Claire Meade (Harriett Spinner), Honey Murray (Pamela), Sondra Barrett (Louise),
Sara Macon (Martha ), Marjorie Beecher (May), Phyllis Hill (Jennifer ), Frank Kreig (Doctor), Larry Douglas
(Sgt. Willie Klink), Rodney McLennan (Captain Robert Lindsay), Jack Baker (Sgt. Henry Wagner), Robert
Bay (Second Lt. Murray Bacchus), Don Weissmuller (First Lt. Ed Anderson), Helen Wenzel (Judy), William
Tabbert (Sgt. Dick Benham), Kenneth Buffett (Sgt. Jimmy Stevenson).
Sources: In this chapter, the sources for the lyrics are the published sheet music (PM), Loewe’s autograph
manuscripts housed at the Library of Congress (LC-​FLC) and an early draft of the script3 from the Harvard
Theatre Collection (DS). Substantial research, including the Harvard draft script, was compiled in 2002 by
Christopher Caines for the Popular Balanchine Dossier4 project.

DS: Draft Script, undated (c.1943), Harvard Theatre Collection.

Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

LC-​ALC: Alan Jay Lerner Collection, Library of Congress.

LC-​FLC: Frederick Loewe Collection, Library of Congress.

1 Pierson was a fellow member of the Lambs Club. Before What’s Up he directed two very short-​lived Broadway plays and
dialogue scenes for Ziegfeld Follies of 1943. The source of the story of What’s Up is unknown.
2 Warnow (1900–​1949) was best known as a conductor for the CBS radio network, including “Your Hit Parade.” This was his
only Broadway producing credit.
3 The DS is titled What’s Up?, but programs from the tryout cities do not use the question mark; nor does the Broadway
Playbill.
4 The Popular Balanchine Dossiers, (S)*MGZMD 146. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.

  11

11:52:41.
 21

Lerner and Loewe’s first collaboration was on a musical called Life of the Party in 1942. Lerner was called in
to assist with the book, and he ended up contributing additional lyrics, but the nature of these is unclear;
the lyricist was Earle T. Crooker, Loewe’s regular lyricist up to that point. The musical opened and closed
in Detroit and has never been seen or heard of again. Yet Lerner and Loewe must have found their collabo-
ration satisfying, because they immediately set to work on their next musical, What’s Up, which opened in
1943. Beyond reading the reviews, it is difficult to assess the work comprehensively because neither a com-
plete score nor Broadway version of the script has survived in a public archive.5 However, an early draft of
the script and manuscripts for many of the songs give a reasonably clear picture of the style and content of
the show. Although the score contains some attractive numbers, the book, which was by Lerner with Arthur
Pierson, was evidently uneven. While the only surviving script is an early draft, its weaknesses are clearly
reflected in the poor reviews for the work. The most savage and amusing appeared in the New York Times,
which said: “No one expects a musical comedy book to rank as high literature—​although one or two have—​
but something a little this side of embarrassing does no harm. What’s Up is all right when it is tap dancing
or singing, but when it settles down to conversations, the entire course of the world seems to slow down
until it has finished.”6 Louis Kronenberger’s review in P.M. was headed “So Cute You Could Spank It” and
he opined: “About most shows this season, one’s only wish is that they had never occurred to their authors.
What’s Up at least reached the level of making one wish that something could have been done about it.”7
Lerner and Pierson’s plot is indeed the flimsy stuff of earlier musicals. The story is set in the present day,
and wartime America is frequently referred to, including an introductory speech from one of the characters
who reassures the audience to keep calm in the event of an air raid: “The management has asked me to remind
you that in case of an alert, please remain in your seats. A competent staff has been trained for just such an
event.”8 A plane carrying an Eastern potentate (the Rawa of Tanglinia),9 whose presence in Washington is
vital for the stability of the American economy, crash lands in the grounds of Miss Langley’s School for Girls.
There has been an outbreak of measles at the school, so the men have to be quarantined and are not allowed
to leave. This gives rise to a series of heavily gendered scenes in which the men and women are placed in two
separate rooms and discuss one another. Eventually they start to interact and decide to hold a party. Chaos
ensues, but in true Broadway style, the plot is resolved just in time for the final curtain.
What’s Up was not fated to run very long: it lasted about eight weeks on Broadway, and was never per-
formed again. But it is an interesting historical landmark for a number of important figures. It was the

5 In 1999 Christie’s auctioned a script for What’s Up signed by Loewe and piano-​vocal scores for three songs. The editors
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

have not been able to identify the buyer or locate the material, which means that “Love is a Step Ahead of Me,” “From the
Chimney to the Cellar,” and the full version of “You’ve Got a Hold on Me” are sadly not included in this chapter.
6 Lewis Nichols, “A Group of Young People Sing and Dance the Measures of ‘What’s Up’ at the National,” New York Times,
November 12, 1943. Clipping in the George Balanchine dossier, New York Public Library.
7 Louis Kronenberger, “So Cute You Could Spank It,” P.M., November 12, 1943. Clipping in the George Balanchine dossier,
New York Public Library.
8 This quotation is from the first page of the draft script in the Harvard Theatre Collection. Of course, it is possible that the
line was cut before Broadway, but it is curious that this speech was at least Lerner’s original intention.
9 This role was played by Jimmy Savo, remembered today for his Dromio in The Boys from Syracuse, but renowned in his day
as a comical mime. His character has no song, as his language is unintelligible to all but Virginia. However, he had a lecherous
dance number with a very tall ballerina. Savo was a fellow Lamb, and perhaps that connection made it possible for writers so
new to Broadway to engage a marquee name for their debut.

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11:52:41.
 31

first of only two Broadway musicals to be orchestrated by Van Cleave, who went on to be a major figure
in Hollywood music (Easter Parade, White Christmas); it was the second of only two Broadway productions
to be directed by George Balanchine, who was one of the finest choreographers of all time; it was an early
Broadway production by Boris Aronson, who went on to design Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, and several of
Stephen Sondheim’s musicals; and, of course, it was the first Broadway production by Lerner and Loewe10 .
That Lerner did not retain a copy of the script suggests he did not value the work, and certainly the surviv-
ing draft is far from distinguished. Yet a few of the songs, such as “My Last Love” and “You’ve Got a Hold on
Me” (the first of many of Lerner’s songs to be covered by Frank Sinatra), give a flavor of what was to come,
and Lerner’s Broadway debut was an important event. Nonetheless, his attitude towards the piece is obvious
from this amusing anecdote he told toward the end of his life:
The first show that Frederick Loewe and I ever wrote was in 1943. It was called “What’s Up” and all by itself it was
a major disaster.
The most distinguished catastrophe that occurred was on the opening night in Wilmington, Delaware. At the
end of the first act, a young girl picked up the telephone to speak to the President of the United States to ask his
advice and help in her love affair. As she was listening to his reply, violins playing accordingly in the pit and shin-
ing tears streaming down her cheeks, the P.A. system suddenly picked up a police call. The theatre was immedi-
ately filled with the gruff voice of a man saying: “Calling Car 42. Calling Car 42. Go immediately to etc.” The music
swelled and the curtain fell. Unfortunately, it did not fall on me.11

Miss Langley’s School for Girls

Lerner’s draft script describes “Miss Langley’s School for Girls”12 as the “alma mater song,” so although the
music has not survived in LC-​FLC, it is reasonable to infer that this was a pastiche school song. Yet the num-
ber is heightened and given a musical comedy twist through the final lines of each refrain, in which Miss
Langley is made out to be a builder, roofer, and plumber. Perhaps the lyric was polished before it reached the
stage; certainly the word “fraternal” seems out of place in a girls’ school song.

Eight Girls: Miss Langley’s school for girls

Miss Langley’s school for girls Teaches the rule for girls.
Cheer as our flag unfurls Here, seeds of dignity have always been sown.
Our alma mater’s in a class all its own. This is the Mecca of
Long has our school been great, Deep and fraternal love,
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Ever the consummate, And it’s established that Miss Langley herself
And it’s established that Miss Langley herself Put on the roof and nailed the shingles down,
Picked out the site and laid the cornerstone, And put in the plumbing,
And she built the buildings, And what is more she did it all alone.
And what is more she did it all alone. Miss Langley’s school for girls.

10 Loewe had two earlier Broadway credits with lyricist Earle Crooker. One song in The Illustrators’ Show (1936, five perfor-
mances) and the full score of Great Lady (1938, twenty performances).
11 Alan Jay Lerner, anecdote intended for a book called Benny Green’s Book of Calamities, copy in LC-​ALC.
12 Source: DS.

What’s Up (1943) | 13

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 41

You’ve Got a Hold on Me

“You’ve Got a Hold On Me”13 was one of the last songs to be written for the show (it does not appear in the
draft script). In the Broadway version, it was sung by Margaret and Sgt. Willie Klink at the end of the open-
ing scene, and was reprised as a production number by Virginia, Sgt. Dick Benham, the fliers, and the girls
in the third scene of Act 2. In the tryouts, the latter iteration of the song was the first and only time it was
heard in the show; perhaps it was moved forward when Lerner and Loewe realized it was one of the strongest
numbers in the score. Certainly both the music and lyrics have a haunting, almost Cole Porter-​esque quality,
both in the chromaticism of the melody and the sense of bewitchment that appears in so many of Porter’s
love songs.

Margaret and Willie: You cast a spell on me

You’ve got a hold on me. That moment Heaven fell on me.
You’ve got that magic hold on me. You’ve got a hold on me.
When I’m alone now, I wonder: What can I do
What is this power I’m under? But always hold on to you?

A Girl Is Like a Book

There is not much room in the schoolhouse where everyone has been quarantined, so all the men are stuck in
one bedroom and all the women in the other. The airmen start discussing the women, and in the draft script,
Captain Robert Lindsay warns the men to be sensitive toward the girls during their stay so that the men do
not cause any more trouble than they already have. One of them, Anderson, says that the trouble with the
other men is that they think all women are the same. Moroney responds by saying “Well, they are” and by
singing “A Girl Is Like a Book”14; he is the troublemaker of the story in the draft script, and his misogynist
attitude is reflected in the song’s lyric. The tryout and Broadway Playbills all indicate that the number was
sung on stage by Capt. Lindsay, which implies that the dialogue probably had to be amended to reflect this
apparent change of attitude. Yet John Chapman’s review of the show in the New York Daily News suggested
that the number needed more work: he described it as “off-​color” and said it “doesn’t seem to fit the sur-
roundings or the people.”15
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Capt. Robert Lindsay: So should you care to read don’t ask your
A girl is like a book friends for one of theirs.16
That no one ever shares, Don’t ever overlook,
Cosmopolites agree

13 The source for this lyric is the published sheet music. A manuscript in LC-​FLC indicates that there was a verse, but only
the music is indicated (the lyric is missing). It is almost certain, therefore, that there were further lyrics, especially consider-
ing the way the song was given a featured production number near the end of the show.
14 Sources: DS and LC-​FLC.
15 John Chapman, “Jimmy Savo in a One-​Man Dream Ballet the Best of ‘What’s Up’,” New York Daily News, November 12,
1943. Clipping in the George Balanchine dossier, New York Public Library.
16 DS contains hardly any punctuation, so most of the punctuation in this number is editorial.

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11:52:41.
 51

You’re better off in visiting a public library. And unconsciously17 you dart
Though often you may find a book so very new Right back to your favorite part,
That you have to read it slow and cut a page or two, For remember, boys, a girl is like a book.
Don’t forget before proceeding
You may like the second reading, A girl is like a book,
For remember, boys, a girl is like a book. And each one has his taste.
The book must be atrocious that will ever go
A girl is like a book to waste.
By all let this be said: Beside a rippling brook,
There’s nothing cosier than curling up with one With leaves around you strewn,
in bed. Is quite delightful for a literary afternoon.
Be sure at your first look There are many types of books throughout the
No judgement you pronounce; universe.
The binding is important but the content is In the Orient, for instance, they’re read in reverse.
what counts. And in Tennessee the style
Occasion’lly you find a book so good that when Is to read books juvenile.
You have finished it you start to read it through For remember, boys, a girl is like a book.
again

Joshua

Meanwhile, in the other bedroom, the girls are wondering what the men are up to. They speculate as to
whether they are asleep or whether they are thinking about them. Virginia says: “Walls are funny things.
Here we are in the same house, practically in the same rooms, and yet this wall separates us.” May replies: “I
know the kid who could help us out!” This provides the cue in the draft script for the song “Joshua,” which is
about the biblical character of the same name, who brought the walls of Jericho tumbling down. In DS the
number is performed by May, but in the playbills for both the tryouts and the Broadway run it is allocated to
Margaret. The context of the number seems forced, but Lerner’s concept for the lyric is humorous.

Margaret: And on the seventh day ’round

Joshua was a crafty one; The walls came tumbling down.
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Never thought a thing could not be done.

When he saw the walls of Jericho, Joshua, I will say again,
He said: “I’m afraid but they will have to go.” Gosh you are a man among all men.
To your memory we will always bow.
He had the boys start in to blow But I wonder Joshua where are you now?
Around the walls of Jericho.
They circled the town

17 DS has “inconsciously.”

What’s Up (1943) | 15

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Three Girls in a Boat

The original materials for “Three Girls in a Boat” do not survive. However, in an oral history with What’s Up
cast member Pat Marshall recorded in September 2002 for the Balanchine Dossier project,18 Marshall sang a
portion of this song, which had a vocal arrangement by Bobby Tucker. The number was performed by Susan,
Jayne and Margaret, who are getting impatient about the lack of attention they have been receiving from
the men.

Jayne, Susan and Margaret: But we’re tired of being in the swim,
Three girls in a boat, And now we’d like to know just when our ship
Three girls who’ve been smitten sadly, will come in.
Three maidens afloat, trusting in fate. All anchors away.
Three kids on a keel, Don’t know where we are going.
Though we have been smitten sadly, All we want to say,
We’re hoping that we-​e-​e Someone will note
Will catch us a date, before we run out of bait. The three girls in a boat.
We hope the gods will not be cross,
We have never caught an albatross.

How Fly Times

“How Fly Times”19 was one of the few numbers to remain in roughly the same place from the first draft of
the script through to Broadway. By the end of Act 1, everyone is beginning to tire of the quarantine and
wondering how they will cope with it. In the draft script, Miss Spinner (the headmistress) is worried that
the girls are going to get “out of hand” before the fortnight is up, but Moroney reassures her that time flies.
In the draft version, the song is allocated to Moroney, Harriet, Virginia, and the men, but for the stage
incarnation it was given to Willie, Dick, and the men. The lyric certainly implies that the men are alone—​
the verse in particular seems inappropriate for Miss Spinner—​so it seems likely that the scene was rewrit-
ten before or during rehearsal. As for Lerner’s lyric, its obvious feature is its comical series of inversions of
popular idioms (“foxer than a smart”, “the fly is timing”), presumably inspired by the fact that the men, like
time, are always flying.
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Bacchus: Moroney:
It’s midnight in Miss Langley’s I’ve got a funny feeling
And nothing ahead. I should-​a stood in bed.

18 Transcript in Box 26, the Popular Balanchine Dossiers, (S)*MGZMD 146. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts. Marshall also recalled the lines:
What a hopeless, helpless dream, . . . [line forgotten]
Much in lovesick made me seem, What a silly dream, we’re all at sea
And that lovely melody
19 Sources: LC-​FLC (verse) and DS (refrain).

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 71

Dick: That high times can pass you right by.

The plans we formulated Believe you me, you’d better wake up
Are all on the fritz.20 And give your life a healthy shake-​up.

Be gay,
Moroney: You’ll find it won’t throw you
Instead of the fruits of life, If you stay as kite as a high.
We’re getting the pits. You’re sure to find it very pleasing
To know the way the blow is breezing.
All this time we are losing
Be like Richard with his lion-​heart:
We should be valu’bly using
Just play it safe—​be foxer than a smart.
On something very amusing.
Great Scott! It’s confusing! Tempus
Is hurrying past us,
Men:
Old tempus is fugiting fast.
How fly times!
So if you’ve hills that still need climbing,
It just goes to show you
Get going, son, the fly is timing.

My Last Love

“My Last Love”21 was originally a duet for Margaret and Willie in Act 1 and then reprised by Moroney late
in Act 2. However, after the tryouts it was moved to the end of Act 1, replacing Virginia’s solo “Just Then,”
and became an ensemble for Margaret, Willie, Moroney, Jayne, and Dick. The lyric is perhaps Lerner’s finest
moment in the show: there is a restrained poetry about the words that almost anticipates his best work of
the 1950s.

Margaret, Willie, Moroney, Jayne and Dick: My last love never danced with me all night.
My last love didn’t touch my heart this way. My last love never held my hand so tight.
My last love wasn’t on my mind all day. But that’s a past love,
I felt no yearning Very much out-​classed love,
Deep inside me burning, And I hope my last love will be you.
But this time I’m learning
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What it is that love can do.

You Wash and I’ll Dry

If at first glance What’s Up seems short on showstoppers, “You Wash and I’ll Dry”22 more than makes up for
it. Loewe’s catchy music and Lerner’s perky lyric make for a strong production number, and the song was

20 In Loewe’s manuscript for this song, he capitalizes this word (perhaps deliberately, since it was his nickname).
21 Source: published sheet music.
22 Sources: published sheet music (verse) and DS (refrain).

What’s Up (1943) | 17

11:52:41.
 81

moved from the middle of Act 1 to the start of Act 2 to give it a more prominent position. It also changed
from being a vocal duet for Susan and Bacchus in the draft script to being a full-​blown ensemble piece for four
characters and the dancers, and at the end of the scene it was reprised by Virginia. The context was probably
changed when the song was shifted to Act 2, but in the draft script, Susan and Bacchus enter the room and
Bacchus asks why nobody else is about. Susan explains to him that everyone else is still washing the dishes
from breakfast because they don’t have the same system that she and Bacchus have (“you wash and I’ll dry”).

Susan, Margaret, Bacchus, Willie: 23 We’ll each own a share,

All that glitters isn’t always gold, Laughter and care
There’s no guarantee romance will hold. Will be well divided,
Every infant knows it, You wash and I’ll dry.
Nevada clearly shows it,
That heated love can easily grow cold. There’ll be no Reno
The failures say that cupid missed ’em, If, baby, we know
That isn’t so, they simply had no system. The way to do a good job
On every problem.
We’ll ride on the beam,
Make a good team, So, sign on the line,
Now that we’ve decided, Everything’s fine,
You wash and I’ll dry. We’re a cinch for heaven,
You wash and I’ll dry.24

The Ill-​Tempered Clavichord

“The Ill-​Tempered Clavichord”25 is a metaphor for the way in which Frederick Loewe approached his work. The
song is in two parts: the first section is in the style of Johann Sebastian Bach, while the second is in a boogie-​
woogie style. This meeting of high and low forms of music is exactly what Loewe—​and other composers like
Bernstein and Weill—​were doing in their Broadway scores in this period. They would create a popular melody
but then use unusual harmonic moves or use other unexpected, sophisticated tools that wouldn’t detract
from the commercial potential of the music but were special to these kinds of composers. “The Ill-​Tempered
Clavichord” is a very broad pastiche of two styles, so there is nothing particularly distinctive about it, but this
gross juxtaposition of high and low seems to evoke the mood of the genre at this time. Obviously, the title
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

of the song refers to Bach’s Well-​Tempered Clavier, his revolutionary keyboard work. The song comes halfway
through Act 2 of What’s Up, when everyone is getting restless about having to stay indoors all day, so they

23 Without question, the entire number would not have been sung in unison by all four characters; however, none of the
surviving sources makes the division of lines clear. The Broadway Playbill also notes that the number was danced by Louise,
Jimmy, and Pamela, with a dance duo performed by Robert and May.
24 Patricia Marshall recalled a few concluding lines that are not in the sheet music:
Wash, wash, wash.
Gosh, gosh, gosh.
All we do is wash and dry.
25 Source: LC-​FLC.

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11:52:41.
 91

decide to throw a party, which will require music. Pamela says “Do you suppose the radio would have some
good dance music tonight?” Martha replies: “Someone could always play the old Clavichord.” Pamela coun-
ters with: “Oh, no, we want something hot! What can a Clavichord do?” And May responds: “A Clavichord can
do plenty.” This is the cue for the song in the draft script. However, the latter indicates that the number was
to be sung by May, whereas the Playbills for the Broadway run reveal that it was sung by Jayne and Susan.

Jayne and Susan: It wouldn’t go for a minuet,

In a museum there was once a celebrated And it had the gall
clavichord, To think that Bach was all wet.
That legend has recorded The barrel-​house had become its meat.
Johann Bach rewarded It memorized every boogie beat
By composing on it his Well-​Tempered So that ever more
Clavichord. It would never forget.

It was the owners’ greatest prize, It gave the museum an awful shock
The cynosure of all the eyes, To see the clavichord begin to rock.
And every day there came The owners didn’t know where they were at
A man to dust the frame When they saw it become a hepcat.
Of the aged clavichord. And then the ill-​tempered clavichord
Refused to listen when they implored;
And this man, while he dusted always whistled It burned the rug and it scorched the floor,
a new rhythm, Then tore off the lid
And the clavichord would listen With a hot solid four.
To this funny whistlin’
And it got to love the rhythm did the clavichord. Now if you’re someone who likes a sniff
Of alligating that is terrif’
Now it’s an ill-​tempered clavichord; Let me tell you, man,
With playing Beethoven it was bored. You’re an also-​ran
Till you’ve jumped to the Ill-​Tempered
Clavichord.
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Cut Songs
Give Us Air

After the men have crash landed at the school, they go into the schoolhouse to telephone for help and the
girls serve them tea. Toward the end of the scene, the girls offer them more tea and they respond with the
number “Give Us Air,”26 in which they say they need to leave and express their affinity with flying. The num-
ber was cut before the tryouts and seems never to have been performed in What’s Up. The music has not
survived, yet the similarity of the lyric to “I Need Air” from The Little Prince (both songs are sung by airmen)

26 Source: DS.

What’s Up (1943) | 19

11:52:41.
 02

suggests the possibility that a number written for Lerner and Loewe’s first full musical was heard for the first
time in their final musical; at the very least, Lerner obviously recycled the idea.

Captain: Men:
Thank you, we’ve had our fill. 27
Give us air
Though it really has been a thrill, A slice of sky that we can share;
It’s too much for us, this feminine fuss and frill. A hunk of heaven way up there.
Give us air.
And though we loved the tea Over land or sea
And the elegant coterie, Or mountain, we
We would run amuck28 in all of this luxury. Don’t care.
Anytime—​ anywhere,
We should blow
Give us air.
Because we know
There’s a place we ought to go.

Here’s the Situation

This cut song29 was intended as the opener to Act 2. It was replaced for the two tryouts by “Natural Life,” but
then the entire scene was cut. The intention for the number was to show first the men in their bedroom,
then the girls in their bedroom, bored and sexually frustrated after practically two weeks of living under the
same roof, unable to go anywhere. The implication is that each group of characters wishes the other would
misbehave. There are some witty moments in the lyric that extend the “fishing” metaphor, but one can see
why Lerner thought better of it.

Moroney, Wagner, Bacchus, Anderson We know the irritating cause,

and Willie: It’s due to all the fishing laws.
Here’s the situation Our fishing skill we never demonstrate.
On the thirteenth day. We never even get a look,
A nibble on our anxious hook,
The fishing here could be just fine We’re seven Izaak Waltons with a lot of
If we could ever throw a line, wasted bait.
But far as we’re concerned the season’s slack.
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

We’re not allowed to ever take All we ever get is “no”—​for no good reason
A fish out of this precious lake, or rhyme.
Although we want it just a while and then we’ll What a dirty shame—​we could have had a
throw it back. whale of a time.

And that’s the situation

On the thirteenth day.

27 The punctuation in this number is editorial.

28 This spelling from the DS.
29 Source: DS.

20 | The Complete Lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner

11:52:41.
Other documents randomly have
different content
unfortunately, in these very cases of neurasthenia
that this is impossible, since they are often excited,
embarrassed, and in no condition to concentrate
their thoughts.
Thus, in a case reported by me in the
International. Centralblatt für die Physiologie und
Pathologie der Harn- und Sexualorgane, Bd. i, Heft
2, p. 58, it was impossible for me to induce hypnosis,
though the patient desired it, and did everything to
make it successful. By reason of the great benefit that
can be given to such unfortunates, and with Ladame’s
case in view (v. infra), in the future, in all such cases,
everything should be done to bring about hypnosis,—
the only means of salvation. The result, in the three
following cases, was satisfactory:—
Case 134. Contrary Sexual Instinct Acquired through
Masturbation.—Mr. X., merchant, aged 29. Father’s parents healthy.
Nothing nervous in father’s family. Father was an irritable, peevish
old man. One brother of the father was a man-about-town, and died
unmarried. Mother died in third confinement, when the patient was
six years old; she had a deep, rough, masculine voice, and coarse
appearance. Of the children, one brother is irritable, “melancholic,”
and indifferent to women.
When a child patient had scarlet fever with delirium. Until his
fourteenth year he was light-hearted and social, but, after that, quiet,
solitary, and “melancholic.” The first trace of sexual feeling appeared
in his tenth or eleventh year, and at that time he learned
masturbation from other boys, and practiced mutual onanism with
them. At the age of thirteen or fourteen, ejaculation for the first time.
Patient has felt no evil results of onanism until the last three months.
 In school he learned easily, but was troubled with headaches.
After the age of twenty, pollutions, in spite of daily practice of
onanism. With pollutions, “procreative” dreams, as man and wife
might perform the act, occurred. In his seventeenth year he was
seduced into mutual onanism by a man having a love for men. He
found satisfaction in this, inasmuch as he was always very passionate
sexually. It was a long time before the patient again sought new
opportunities for intercourse with males. He did it simply to rid
himself of semen. He felt no friendship or love for the person with
whom he had intercourse. He felt satisfaction only when he played
the passive rôle,—when manustupration was practiced on him. When
the act was once completed, he had no respect for the individual. If it
happened that, later, he came to respect the man, then he ceased to
indulge in the act with him. Later it became indifferent to him
whether he masturbated or had masturbation practiced on him.
When he himself practiced onanism, he always thought of pleasing
men practicing onanism on him during the act. He preferred a hard,
rough hand.
The patient thought that, had he not been led astray, he would
have arrived at a natural mode of satisfaction of his sexual desires.
He never felt love for his own sex, though he had pleased himself
with the thought of loving men. At first he had had sensual
inclinations toward the opposite sex. He had taken pleasure in
dancing, and he had been pleased with women, but he had taken
more pleasure in the figure than the face. Too, he had had erections
at the sight of women that pleased him. He had never attempted
coitus, for fear of infection; whether he was potent or not with
women, he did not know. He thought he could be so no longer,
because his feeling for women had grown cold, especially during late
years.
While previously, in his sensual dreams, he had had ideas of
both men and women, of late years he had dreamed only of
approaches to men; he could not remember that he had dreamed, in
late years, of sensual relations with a woman. At the theatre, as well
as in the circus and ballet, the feminine figure had always interested
him. In museums masculine and feminine statues had affected him
equally.
Patient is a great smoker, a beer-drinker, loves male society, and
is a gymnast and skater. Anything dandified was repugnant to him,
and he had never felt any desire to please men; he would even have
preferred to please women.
He now felt his position to be painful, because onanism had
obtained the upper hand. Masturbation, that had previously been
practiced without evil effects, now began to disclose its bad results.
Since July, 1889, he had suffered with neuralgia of the testicles.
The pain occurred particularly at night; and at night there was also
trembling (increased reflex excitability).
Sleep was not refreshing, and he would wake up with pain in the
testicles. He was inclined, now, to indulge more frequently in
onanism. He was afraid of the consequences of the habit. He hoped
that his sexual life might still be turned into normal channels. Now,
he thought of the future; he had a relation with a girl, who was
attractive to him, and the thought to possess her as a wife was
pleasing.
For five days he had abstained from onanism, but he could
scarcely believe that he would be able, with his own strength, to
overcome the habit. Of late he had been very much depressed, having
lost all desire for work, and become tired of life.
Patient is tall, powerful, well nourished, and has a thick growth
of beard. Skull and skeleton normal. Knee-jerks very prompt; deep
reflexes in upper extremities much increased. Pupils dilated, equal,
and act promptly. Carotids of equal calibre; hyperæsthesia urethræ;
cords and testicles not sensitive; genitals normal.
The patient was calmed, and given hope for the future, provided
that he give up onanism and attempt to transfer his sexual desires
from persons of his own sex to females.
Hip-baths (24° to 20° R.); ext. secal. conut. aquos., 0.5;
antipyrin, 1.0 (pro die); pot. brom., 4.0 (evenings), were ordered.
 December 13th. To-day the patient came, in a disturbed
condition of mind, complaining that, unaided, he was unable to resist
the impulse to masturbate, and he asked for help.
A trial of hypnosis induced a condition of deep lethargy in the
patient.
He was given the following suggestions:—
1. I can not, must not, and will not masturbate again.
2. I abhor the love for my own sex, and shall never again think
men handsome.
3. I shall and will become well again, fall in love with a virtuous
woman, be happy, and make her happy.
December 14th. While out walking to-day, patient saw a
handsome man, and felt himself powerfully drawn toward him.
From this time there were hypnotic sittings every second day,
with the above suggestions.
December 18th (fourth sitting), somnambulism occurred; the
impulse to onanism and interest in men disappear.
At the eighth sitting “complete virility” was added to the above
suggestions. The patient feels himself morally elevated and
physically strengthened. The neuralgia of the testicles has
disappeared. He now found that he was without sexual feeling.
He now believed himself free from masturbation and contrary.
sexual inclination.
After the eleventh sitting he thought that further help was
unnecessary. He wished to go home, and marry. He felt well and
potent. Early in January, 1890, treatment ceased.
In March, 1890, the patient wrote: “I have since had several
occasions on which it has been necessary for me to use all my moral
strength in order to overcome my habit, and, thank God, I have been
successful in freeing myself from this vice. Several times I have had
opportunity for sexual intercourse, and I have found pleasure in it. I
look calmly on my happy future.”
 Case 135. Acquired Contrary Sexual Instinct. Marked
Improvement under Hypnotic Treatment.—Mr. P., born in 1863,
official in a manufactory. He comes of a highly respected patrician
family of Middle Germany, in which nervousness and insanity have
been of frequent occurrence.
His great-grandfather on the father’s side and his sister died
insane; the grandmother died of apoplexy; father’s brother died
insane, and a daughter of the latter died of cerebral tuberculosis. The
maternal grandmother was melancholic for years; maternal
grandfather, insane. A maternal uncle took his life in an attack of
insanity. The patient’s father is very nervous. An elder brother is very
neurasthenic, and has anomalies of the vita sexualis; another is the
subject of Case 155; a third is eccentric in conduct, and is said to be
subject to fixed ideas. A sister suffers with convulsions, and another
died of them when a little child.
The patient is constitutionally predisposed; for he was early very
peculiar, irritable, irascible, and impressed those around him as
being abnormal.
His vita sexualis appeared very early and in great intensity, and
was satisfied, without any seductions, in onanism. From his
sixteenth year the prematurely developed boy visited brothels of the
Capital, using his permissions to go out on Sundays and holidays for
that purpose. He took pleasure in coitus, but during the week he
satisfied himself with onanism. After his twentieth year, when he
became independent, the patient indulged with prostitutes
excessively, and fell ill with neurasthenia sexualis, becoming
relatively impotent and unsatisfied in coitus, owing to weakness of
erection and premature ejaculation. His sexual libido became more
powerful than ever, and was satisfied in onanism. Early in 1888 the
patient made the acquaintance of a young man. “By his pleasing face,
his attractive manner, and his beautiful form, he conquered me
entirely. I wished to speak to him, and was happy at mere sight of
him. I was completely in love with him. With this, my love for women
was extinguished. Any man could excite me to such an extent that,
for some moments, I would feel my memory fail, and I would
stammer.
“Soon after this I made the acquaintance of a gentleman who
was likewise very attractive, and who had a decided influence on my
future life. He was male-loving. I confessed to him that I no longer
felt anything but aversion for the female sex, and that I was attracted
to men.
“When I once asked my companion how he brought it about that
soldiers would surrender themselves to him, he answered that the
principal thing was skill; almost any of them could be brought to it.
Late in 1888, thinking of these words, I was attracted by an officer’s
servant, and was intensely excited by him, but ejaculation never
occurred. Since I saw that the soldier would surrender himself
without trouble, I approached him. Alium quondam militem in
cubiculum allectum rogavi ut veste exuta mecum in lectum
concumberet. Rogatus fecit quæ volui et alter alterius penem trivit.
“Though after this success I misused many persons, I was never
really in love, so to speak, with but one. He was a very handsome
young fellow of seventeen. His voice was so attractive to me, and his
manner was so delicately proper, that I cannot forget him. In my
dreams I thought only of handsome young men, and often for whole
nights I could not sleep, owing to sensual feeling.”
Early in 1889 the patient’s conduct awakened a suspicion of
male-love. A threatening communication frightened him, and
plunged him in deep depression, so that he contemplated suicide. At
the advice of the family physician, he came to the Capital. Since the
patient was unable to overcome his habitual desires by his own will,
hypnotic treatment was undertaken. It induced but mild lethargy,
and, in opposition to the seduction of former lovers, it had but little
effect.
At that time the patient was wanting in earnest desire. There
was some improvement in matters, in the face of the disgrace to
relatives and the prospect of a legal examination that was actually
threatening. The patient determined to attempt a cure with the
author.
I found him to be a delicate, pale, very neurasthenic man, much
depressed, and despairing about the future. He was without
degenerative signs. He realized his perverted situation, and seemed
to be willing to do anything in order to become again a decent, moral
man.
He regretted exceedingly his sexual perversion, which he
regarded as abnormal, but also as having been acquired. He made no
attempt to conceal the fact that he could not control himself with
young men, and likewise he would not say that he could abstain from
onanism, to which, faute de mieux, he was driven. Only a powerful,
imperious will could keep him from it.
Thus far his male-love had consisted exclusively of mutual
onanism. Erections occurred only when touching men he loved;
ejaculation resulted early, but simple embrace was not sufficient. He
had never felt himself in any particular sexual rôle toward a man.
Genitals and vegetative organs normal.
In addition to treatment directed to his neurasthenia, on April 8,
1890, hypnotic suggestion was begun. Hypnosis was easily induced
by simply looking at him, with verbal suggestion. After a half-minute
the patient passed into deep lethargy, with a cataleptiform state of
the muscles. The awakening was brought about by suggesting it at
counting three. Post-hypnotic suggestions were always successful.
The intra-hypnotic suggestions were:—
1. The interdiction of onanism.
2. The command that male-love should be felt to be disgraceful
and despicable, and that it should be impossible.
3. The command to regard only women as beautiful; to approach
them, to dream of them, and to have libido and erection at sight of
them.
The sittings occurred daily. On April 14th, the patient
announced, with thankfulness and a kind of moral satisfaction, that
he had had pleasure in coitus, and had ejaculated tardily. On April
16th, he felt free from inclination to masturbate, attracted to women,
and perfectly indifferent to men. He dreamed of female charms and
coitus with women. May 1st, the patient seemed and felt himself to
be normal sexually. He has become a different man mentally, full of
courage and self-confidence. He has coitus with complete
satisfaction, and thinks that he is insured against relapse.
In a later letter Mr. P. writes: “As was only to be expected, I find
myself lastingly freed from my errors. All that remains to remind me
of my unhappy time are the dreams, which, though they are
infrequent, come from my past, which I have no power to banish,
and which sometimes, indeed, pleasantly occupy my thoughts. But
by my own will I yet hope soon to succeed in freeing myself
absolutely from them. Should I ever become weak again, the ideas
you have impressed on me would, I am sure, make an energetic
resistance, and I should not succumb.”
On October 20, 1890, P. wrote me: “I am completely cured of
onanism, and I have no pleasure in male-love. Yet complete virility
does not seem to have been re-established, notwithstanding the fact
that I lead a virtuous life. Nevertheless, I feel satisfied.”
Case 136. Acquired Contrary Sexual Instinct.—Mr. Z., aged 32,
divorced. He comes of a hysteropathic mother. Maternal
grandmother suffered with hysteria, and her brothers and sisters
were neurotic. One brother is an urning. Z. was but poorly endowed
mentally, and did not learn easily. No sickness besides scarlatina.
When thirteen, he was taught to masturbate by companions in a
school. Sexually, he was hyperæsthetic, and, at seventeen, began to
indulge in coitus, with full pleasure and power. For reasons of
position and money, he married at twenty-six. The marriage was very
unhappy. After a year Mrs. Z. became incapable of coitus, by reason
of uterine disease. Z. satisfied his inordinate desires with other
women, faute de mieux, by masturbation. Besides, he gave himself
up to play, led an absolutely dissolute life, became exceedingly
neurasthenic, and sought to strengthen his weakened nerves by
drinking great quantities of wine and brandy. To his essential
cerebral asthenia were added peripheral alcoholic cramps and
globus, and he became very emotional. His libido nimia continued
unabated. On account of his disgust of prostitutes and fear of
infection, satisfaction by coitus was exceptional. For the most part,
the patient helped himself with onanism.
Four years ago he noticed weakening of erection and decrease of
libido for women. He began to feel himself drawn toward men, and
his lascivious dreams were no longer concerned with women, but
with men.
Three years ago, while being rubbed by a bath-attendant, he
became powerfully excited sexually (the attendant also had an
erection, to patient’s surprise). He could not keep from embracing
and kissing the attendant, and allowing him to perform masturbation
on him, the attendant doing it most willingly. From this time this
mode of sexual indulgence was all that he cared for. Women became
a matter of entire indifference to him; he devoted himself exclusively
to men. With them he practiced mutual masturbation, and had a
longing to sleep with them. He abhorred pederasty. He was entirely
satisfied until (August, 1890) an anonymous letter, warning him to
be careful, brought him to his senses. He was much frightened, had
hysterical attacks, and became much depressed. He was embarrassed
before men, seemed like a pariah in society, contemplated suicide,
and finally confessed to a priest, who comforted him. He now fell
into a religious state (equivalent), and, out of remorse and to cure
himself of his abnormal sexual inclinations, wished to go into a
cloister. While in this state, my “Psychopathia Sexualis” fell into his
hands. He was frightened and filled with shame, but found a comfort
in it, inasmuch as he concluded that he must have some malady. His
first thought was to rehabilitate himself sexually in his own eyes. He
overcame all disinclination, and visited a brothel. At first he was not
successful, on account of great excitement, but he finally succeeded.
Since, however, his contrary sexual inclinations were not
overcome, in spite of all his efforts to put them down, he finally came
to me, asking for assistance. He felt himself to be terribly
unfortunate, and very near to despair and suicide. He saw
destruction before him, and would be saved at any price.
 His confession was interrupted by numerous hysterical attacks.
Comforting and encouraging words about his future had a calming
influence.
Physically, patient presented a slightly retreating brow, with no
other anatomical signs of degeneration. Spinal irritation,
exaggerated deep reflexes, and a sense of pressure in the head
pointed to a neurasthenic condition. No genital anomalies, though
there was hyperæsthesia urethræ. Mien distressed; attitude relaxed;
mind distracted and vacillating.
Hip baths, massage, ergot with antipyrin and pot. brom.,
ordered, with interdiction of onanism, intercourse with men, and
lascivious thoughts of them.
After a few days the patient came complaining that he was not
equal to the task. He said his will was too weak. In this precarious
situation, it seemed that nothing but hypnotic treatment could bring
improvement.
September 11, 1889. First sitting. Bernheim’s method used, in
order to induce lethargy as quickly as possible.
Suggestions:—
1. I abhor onanism, and will not masturbate again.
2. I regard the inclination for men disgusting,—horrible; and I
shall never think men handsome and enticing.
3. Women alone I find enticing. Once a week I shall cohabit,
with full pleasure and power.
The patient received these suggestions, and repeated them in a
drawling tone.
The sittings took place every second day. After the fifteenth, it
was possible to induce the somnambulic stage of hypnosis with any
post-hypnotic suggestions desired.
The patient improved morally and mentally, but symptoms of
cerebral neurasthenia troubled him still, and, now and then, dreams
of men occurred; and there were, also, in the waking state,
inclinations toward men, which depressed him exceedingly.
 Treatment until September 24th. Result: Free from onanism; no
longer excitable to men, though impressionable to women. Normal
coitus once in eight days. Hysterical symptoms absent; neurasthenic
symptoms much ameliorated.
On October 6th the patient reported by letter that he was feeling
well, and expressed his gratitude for his salvation; he felt as if given a
new life.
December 9, 1889, patient again came for treatment. Of late he
had had lascivious dreams of men twice, but had experienced no
inclination toward men in the waking state. He had also resisted the
impulse to masturbate, though, while living alone in the country, he
had had no opportunity for coitus. He had inclinations only for the
opposite sex, and, as a rule, dreamed only of females. Returned to
the city, he had indulged in coitus with pleasure. The patient felt
himself morally rehabilitated, being almost free from neurasthenic
symptoms; and, after three more hypnotic sittings, he declared
himself perfectly well, and confident that he would not relapse. Such
a relapse occurred, however, in September, 1890, when, after over-
exertion on an excursion into the mountains, and emotional strain
with want of opportunity for coitus, he had again become
neurasthenic.
Again he had dreams of men, and felt drawn toward attractive
male forms; he masturbated many times, and, after returning to the
city, found no real pleasure in coitus. By means of anti-neurasthenic
treatment and hypnosis, it was possible soon to restore the previous
condition.
In the course of the years 1890 and 1891 the patient now and
then had contrary sexual feelings and dreams, but only when, as a
result of emotional strain or excesses, his neurosis re-appeared. At
such times satisfaction in coitus was wanting. He would then find it
necessary to undergo a few hypnotic sittings, in order to restore his
equilibrium—always with success.
At the end of 1891 the patient pointed with satisfaction to the
fact that, since treatment, he had been able to avoid masturbation
and male-intercourse, and had regained his self-confidence and self-
respect.
The foregoing details of the successful results of
hypnotic suggestion, in cases of acquired contrary
sexual feeling, make it seem possible that those
unfortunates that are afflicted with the congenital
perversion may be helped in some degree by the
same means.
To be sure, here the condition is entirely
different, since a congenital condition must be
combated, an abnormal psycho-sexual life
annihilated, and a new one created. A priori this task
seems impossible; at least, in the perfect urning. That
the apparently impossible is artificially possible may
be seen from the case of Schrenk-Notzing, which
follows below. It far surpasses the case reported by
me (v. infra), in which at least the homo-sexual
feelings and impulses were removed by means of
hypnotic suggestion.
The case of Ladame (v. infra) is an analogous
one. The conditions are more favorable in psycho-
sexual hermaphrodites, where at least there are
rudiments of hetero-sexual feelings that may be
strengthened and made operative by suggestion.
Case 137. “I was born in 1858, out of wedlock. It was only late
that I was able to trace my obscure origin, and obtain knowledge of
my parents; and this knowledge is, unfortunately, very obscure and
imperfect. My father and mother were cousins. My father died three
years ago. He had later married, and, as far as I know, had several
healthy children.
“I do not think that my father had contrary sexual feelings.
Without knowing him as my father, I often saw him when I was a
child. He was a powerful, masculine man. As for the rest, it is said
that, at the time of my birth, or before, he was sexually ill.
“I have often seen my mother on the street, but I did not then
know that she was my mother. At the time of my birth she may have
been about twenty-four years old. She was tall, and quick and
energetic of movement, and her character was decided. At the time of
my birth she is reported to have gone about much in male attire, to
have worn short hair, to have smoked a long pipe, and in general to
have been remarkable for her eccentric character. She was
exceedingly well educated, and is said to have been beautiful in her
youth. She left a fortune,—considerable even when measured by our
present ideas,—but she died unmarried.
“In any case, all this would point to homo-sexual inclinations,
or, at least, to abnormalities. On the other hand, several years before
my birth, my mother took care of a little girl. This step-sister, whom I
never knew, married young, but early in her married life, for reasons
unknown to me, she poisoned herself.
“I am 1.7 metres tall, measure 92 centimetres around the waist,
and 102 centimetres around hips, and, therefore, I think my pelvis is
somewhat over-developed. The subcutaneous fat has always been
abundant. Skeletal form is strong. The muscular system is well
formed, but, from lack of exercise, perhaps owing to the influence of
early, long-continued, and frequent indulgence in onanism, it is not
well developed; so that I appear stronger than I really am. Hair of
head and face is normal; genital hair, somewhat thin. The upper
portion of the body is as good as without hair. In all other ways my
appearance is fully masculine. Gait, attitude, and voice are those of a
fully developed man, and other urnings have often told me that they
would never have suspected my passion. I served in the army, and
always found pleasure in all knightly exercises,—riding, fencing,
swimming, etc.
 “My early training was under a priest. I had but few real
playmates. The family life of my foster-parents was faultless. In
October, 1861, I entered the Institute. Here I indulged in my first
perverse acts, which I shall describe more fully when I come to the
development of my sexual life.
“I finished the Gymnasium, served my voluntary years in the
army, and then studied forestry, being now a director of estates.
During my early years my mental development was very slow. I first
learned to speak in my third year, and thus the supposition that I had
hydrocephalus was strengthened. From the time of beginning school,
my mental development was abnormal; indeed, I learned easily, but I
have never been able to concentrate my activity on any particular
subject. I have a great interest in art and æsthetics, but almost none
in music. In early years my character was the worst possible. Without
being able to give any reason for it, during the last twelve years there
has been an entire transformation. Now, there is nothing I hate more
than a lie, and I never speak untruth even in jest. In financial
matters, without being avaricious, I have become an economical
manager.
“It is enough that, with a deep feeling of shame, I look back on
my past; and, if I could be freed from my unhappy sexual perversion,
or perversity, I should justly regard myself as a true gentleman. I am
kind, and always ready to be charitable to the extent of my means; I
am gay-spirited, and regarded with favor socially. I have no trace of
that nervous irritability which is so often noticeable in others like
me. Too, I am not wanting in personal courage. There is nothing in
the early period of my development that points to abnormality. To be
sure, as a child, I liked to lie in bed on my abdomen, and, of a
morning, I often took delight in rolling about on my abdomen, much
to the amusement of my foster-parents; but I cannot recall that, at
such times, I ever had sensual feeling. I never sought much to play
with girls, and I never played with dolls. I early heard talk about
sexual matters; but I never thought anything about it. In my dreams,
too, at that time, there was nothing sexual; and, in my association
with boys of my own age, there was nothing of that kind. I think I
may say that my vita sexualis was really first awakened after I had
been seduced into mutual masturbation, in my thirteenth year, by a
room-mate at the Institute. At that time ejaculation did not take
place, but first about a year later. Nevertheless, I gave myself up to
the vice of onanism passionately. At this time, however, the first
signs of homo-sexual inclination were manifested. Youthful,
powerful men, market-helpers, workmen, and soldiers took
possession of my dreams, and played an important rôle in my fancy
while masturbating. At this time was also first shown the tendency to
pederasty, especially passive. Up to my fourteenth year I frequently
made mutual attempts at pederasty with my seducer, but neither of
us were successful in bringing about immissio. At the same time,
there was also a weak inclination for the female sex. About a year
after the first indulgence in onanism, I was once with a puella
publica, but I had neither ejaculation nor any especial feeling of
sensual pleasure. Thereafter, and up to my nineteenth year, I
performed coitus in public houses about six times. Erection and
ejaculation occurred promptly, but without marked sensual pleasure.
At least onanism, particularly mutual onanism, I liked quite as much.
I have never had any love for athletes. About ten years ago, while at
H., a watering-place, I thought I was in love with a beautiful lady of a
highly respectable family; I was happy in her presence, and thought
myself happy in finding my love returned. For a time this affair kept
me from masturbating; I was only afraid that, weakened by onanism
that had been practiced for years, I should be incapable of
performing my marital duty. When we became widely separated, my
feeling quickly cooled; I found that I had deceived myself; and, after
about two years, without jealousy, I was able to hear that the lady
had married. My inclination for women—if, in reality, I have ever had
any—grew colder and colder. Two and a half years ago, when I visited
a public house with very virile friends, I last performed coitus. There
was erection, but no ejaculation. Women have become indifferent to
me. A prostitute who acts coarsely excites my repugnance. With
intellectual women, particularly when they are elderly, I like to
converse, but in their society I am often unskillful and awkward,
often devoid of tact. I have never been able to find any charm in
woman’s physical form.
“But, to return to the perverse inclinations. When, at the age of
fourteen, I went to H., I lost sight of my lover and seducer. He was
some years older than I, and was an official; and, in this capacity,
when I was nineteen, I again met him once on the railway. We
immediately cut the journey short, and lodged together, attempting
mutual pederasty; but, on account of pain, immissio was not
successful. We amused ourselves in mutual onanism. In H. I had
sexual intercourse with two fellow-students, but this intercourse was
confined to frequent mutual onanism, owing to the fact that they
were not inclined to pederasty. During the last year of my stay (when
I was nineteen), I had intercourse with another person, which
likewise consisted of onanism; but our intercourse was more
intimate, and we always retired, and practiced mutual onanism in
bed. From Easter, 1869, until July, 1870, I had no lover. I practiced
onanism alone. When the war broke out, I offered myself as a
volunteer, but was not accepted. At the same time a former school-
mate offered himself. He had developed into a remarkably handsome
man. I had to spend one night with him in an over-crowded hotel.
Though as students we had never associated sexually, he was not
averse to my desire, and attempted pederasty. In this instance pain
prevented success; but, in the attempt, ejaculatio ante anum meum
occurred. Even now I can recall the pleasurable feeling I had in it,—a
feeling previously unknown. After the war I frequently met this
friend, but our intercourse was later limited to onanism. During the
following eighteen years I had but two opportunities for homo-sexual
intercourse. The first was in the winter of 1879, on the occasion of
meeting a handsome hussar in a railway carriage. I induced him to
sleep with me at an hotel. Later he confessed to me that he had
previously practiced mutual masturbation with the son of a landed
proprietor of his town. I could not bring him to pederasty. On the
other hand, I induced ejaculation in him by receptio penis ejus in os
meum. This caused me no satisfaction, but rather disgust. I have
never tried it again; and, too, I have never allowed receptio penis mei
in os alterius. In 1887, likewise on the railway, I made the
acquaintance of a sailor, and induced him to stay with me at an hotel.
He said he had never practiced pederasty, but he was ready for it. He
was apparently sensually excited; he had an erection immediately,
and performed the act with evident passion. It was the first time that
pederasty was successfully performed. I had terrible pain, but also
indescribable pleasure.
“With my sojourn here, my vita sexualis has undergone a
complete change. I have learned how easy it is to find persons who,
partly for money and partly from desire, yield to our inclinations. I
have also not been spared annoying experiences with cheats. Until
the end of the last year (since then, owing to fear of venereal
infection, I have not gone beyond mutual masturbation), I enjoyed
male-love to the full extent, particularly in passive pederasty. I have
never practiced active pederasty, because I have found no one able to
endure the pain.
“Generally, I seek my lovers among cavalrymen and sailors, and,
eventually, among workmen, especially butchers and smiths. Robust
forms, with healthy facial complexions, attract me especially.
Leathern riding-trousers have a particular charm for me. I have no
partiality for kissing and the like. I also love large, hard, and
calloused hands.
“I do not wish to leave unmentioned that, under certain
circumstances, I have great control of myself.
“As director of an estate, I lived in a large house. My personal
servant was a very handsome young man who had served in the
hussars. After once having spoken with him, in general terms, on the
subject, and found that he could not be approached, for years I lived
in close intimacy with him, and enjoyed his beauty, but never
touched him. I think that, to this day, he knows nothing of my
passion. Likewise, two and a half years ago, in C., I made the
acquaintance of a sailor, who is still regarded by me and my
acquaintances as one of the handsomest men we know. After an
absence of more than two years, on invitation, he visited me a few
weeks ago. I knew how to arrange matters so that we slept in the
same room, and I burned with desire to be nearer to him. As a
preliminary, however, I sounded him in confidential talk; and, when
I found that he despised everything connected with male-love, I had
not the heart to approach him more closely. For weeks we slept in the
same room, and I took constant delight in his divine form (at first,
was sexually excited, in fact); I bathed with him, in the Roman
manner, in order to see his beautiful form naked,—but he never
learned anything of my passion. I still have an ideal, platonic relation
with this young man, who, for one of his position, has an unusual
education and fine talent for poetry.
“Until my thirty-eighth year I had not a clear understanding of
my condition. I always thought that, by early and frequent
masturbation, I had become averse to women, and hoped always
that, when the right woman came, I should be able to abandon
onanism and find pleasure in her. Here it was that I first came to
fully understand my condition, after making the acquaintance of
others suffering and feeling like myself. At first I was frightened;
later I came to look upon my fate as something not dependent on
myself. Too, I made no further effort to resist temptation.
“Two or three weeks ago ‘Psychopathia Sexualis’ fell into my
hands. The work has made an unexpectedly deep impression on me.
At first I read the work with an interest that was undoubtedly
lascivious. The description of the cultivation of mujerados, for
example, excited me uncommonly. The thought of a young, powerful
man being emasculated in this manner, in order, later, to be used for
pederasty by a whole tribe of wild, powerful, and sensual Indians, so
excited me that I masturbated five times during the next two days,
fancying myself such a presumptive mujerado. The farther I read in
the book, however, the more I saw its moral earnestness; the more I
felt disgust with my condition; and the more I saw that I must do
everything, if it were possible, to bring about a change in my
condition. When I had finished the book, I was determined to seek
assistance from its author.
“The reading of this work had an undoubted effect. Since then I
have masturbated only twice, and have practiced onanism with
cavalrymen only twice. In every instance I have had really less
pleasure and satisfaction than before, and I always have the feeling:
‘Ah, if I could only be free from it!’ Nevertheless, I confess that, even
now, in the society of handsome soldiers, I immediately have
erection.
“In conclusion, I may add that, in spite of, or, perhaps, on
account of, onanism, I have never had pollutions. The ejaculation of
semen, which usually consists of only a few drops, and it has always
been so, takes place only after prolonged friction. If, for any reason, I
have not masturbated for a long time, the ejaculation takes place
quickly, and is more abundant. About twelve years ago Hansen tried
in vain to hypnotize me.”
In the spring of 1891 the writer of the foregoing autobiography
visited me, with the declaration that he could live no longer in his
condition; that he looked to hypnotic treatment as the only hope of
salvation, for he had not strength enough to resist his impulse to
masturbation and satisfaction with persons of his own sex. He felt
like a pariah; like an unnatural man; like one outside the laws of
nature and society, and in danger of criminal prosecution. He felt
moral repugnance when he performed the act with a man, but yet the
sight of any handsome soldier actually electrified him. For years he
had not had the slightest sympathy with women, not even mentally.
The patient looked to be exactly the person, physically and
mentally, described by himself in his autobiography. His head was
exquisitely hydrocephalic, and also plagiocephalic. At first attempts
at hypnosis met with difficulties. Only by Braid’s method, with the
help of a little chloroform, was deep lethargy attained at the third
sitting. From that time simply looking at a shining object was
sufficient. The suggestions consisted of the command to avoid
masturbation, the removal of homo-sexual feelings, and the
assurance that the patient would have inclination for women and be
virile, and have pleasure only in hetero-sexual intercourse.
Masturbation was indulged in but once; after the eighth sitting the
patient dreamed of a woman.
 When, after the fourteenth sitting, the patient had to return, on
account of pressing business, he declared that he was quite free from
any inclination to masturbate or to indulge in male-love, but that he
was by no means absolutely free from his partiality for men. He felt a
returning interest in the female sex, and hoped to be freed finally
from his unhappy condition by continuance of the treatment.
Case 138. Psychical Hermaphroditism.—Mr. von P., aged 25,
single, comes of a neuropathic family. As a child he had convulsions.
He recovered, but remained weak, emotional, and irritable. No
severe illnesses. Before his tenth year sexuality was manifested. His
earliest remembrance concerning it was that of lascivious feelings in
company with the servants of the house. When older, he had sensual
dreams which were of intercourse with men. In circuses the male
performers alone interested him.
Youthful, powerful men were most enticing to him. Often, he
could scarcely resist the longing to fall on their necks and kiss them.
Of late simply the touching of such persons had become sufficient to
give him pleasure and induce ejaculation. The impulse to engage in
“affairs” with men he had, thus far, fortunately resisted. The patient
is a psychical hermaphrodite, in so far as he is not insensitive to the
charms of women, and finds men more pleasing than women. In fact,
feminine nudity had never pleased him, and he can remember only
to have dreamed once of coitus with a woman.
On account of his great sexual desire, and because he was
ashamed to give himself up to men, after his twentieth year he began
to have sexual intercourse with women. Since then, he has very
seldom indulged in manual onanism, but often in mental
masturbation, during which the forms of handsome men float
through his fancy.
He had coitus with success, but without pleasure or sensual
feeling. On account of circumstances, he was forced to abstain from
his twenty-second until his twenty-fourth year. This abstinence was
painful, and he relieved himself, now and then, by mental onanism.
 When, a year ago, he had opportunity again for coitus, he
noticed failure of libido for women, imperfect erection, and
premature ejaculation. Finally he gave up coitus; then libido for men
was manifested.
In the condition of irritable weakness of the ejaculatory centre,
mere touching of sympathetic men was sufficient to induce
ejaculation.
Patient is an only child. The circumstances of his family demand
that he marry. He justly hesitates to do this, thinks he is mentally
impotent, and asks for advice and help.
He points out that his feeling for men must be eradicated in
order to help him.
Patient’s appearance is, in all respects, masculine. His head is
slightly hydrocephalic and rhombic. Abundant growth of beard.
Genitals normal; cremasteric reflex cannot be excited. No
manifestations of neurasthenia. Neuropathic eyes. Pollutions
infrequent. Erections occur only as a result of contact with men.
July 16, 1889, hypnotic suggestion, after Bernheim’s method,
was begun. It was first at the third sitting that deep lethargy was
induced.
Suggestions: “You have no longer any desire for men. Only
woman is beautiful and desirable. You will love a woman, marry, be
happy, and make her happy. You are fully potent; you feel that
already.”
In daily hypnosis, which never goes beyond lethargy, the patient
accepts the suggestions. On July 24th, he announces that he has had
pleasure in coitus; and the male servants no longer interest him. At
the same time, he still finds men more beautiful than women. On
August 1, 1889, it was necessary to discontinue treatment. Result:
Completely potent; entire indifference for men, but also for women.
The same treatment met with decided success in
a case of psycho-sexual hermaphroditism, reported
by me in vol. i of the Internat. Centralblatt für die
Physiol. u. Path. der Harn- und Sexualorgane.
Case 139. Mr. von X., aged 25, landed proprietor. He comes of a
neuropathic, passionate father. Father is said to have been normal
sexually. His mother was nervous, as were her two sisters. Maternal
grandmother was nervous, and his maternal grandfather was a roué,
much given to venery. Patient is like his mother, and an only child.
From birth he was weak, suffered much with migraine, and was
nervous. He passed through several illnesses. At fifteen he began
masturbation, without having been taught it.
Until his seventeenth year he says he never had feeling for men,
or, in fact, any sexual inclination; but at this time desire for men
arose. He fell in love with a comrade. His friend returned his love.
They embraced and kissed and indulged in mutual onanism.
Occasionally patient practiced coitus inter femora viri. He abhorred
pederasty. Lascivious dreams were concerned only with men. In the
circus and theatre males alone interested him. The inclination was
for those of about twenty years. Handsome, tall forms were enticing
to him. Given these conditions, he was quite indifferent to other
characteristics of the men. In his sexual affairs with men his part was
always that of a man.
After his eighteenth year the patient was always a source of
anxiety to his highly respected parents, for he then began a love-
affair with a male waiter, who fleeced him and made him an object of
remark and ridicule. He was taken home. He consorted with servants
and hostlers. He caused a scandal. He was sent away for travel. In
London he got into a “blackmailing scrape,” but succeeded in
escaping to his home.
He profited in no way by this bitter experience, and again
showed disgraceful inclinations toward men. Patient was sent to me
to be cured of his fatal peculiarity (December 12, 1888). Patient is a
tall, stately, robust, well-nourished young man, of masculine build;
large, well-formed genitals. Gait, voice, and attitude are masculine.
He has no pronounced masculine passions. He smokes but little, and
only cigarettes; drinks little, and is fond of confectionery. He loves
music, arts, æsthetics, flowers, and moves in ladies’ society by
preference. He wears a moustache, the face being otherwise cleanly
shaved. His garments are in nowise remarkable. He is a soft, blasé
fellow, and a do-nothing. He lies abed mornings, and can scarcely be
made to rise before noon. He says he has never regarded his
inclination toward his own sex as abnormal. He looks upon it as
congenital; but, taught by his evil experiences, he wishes to be cured
of his perversion. He has little faith in his own will. He has tried to
help himself, but always begins to masturbate. This he finds
injurious, inasmuch as it causes slight neurasthenic symptoms.
There is no moral defect. The intelligence is a little below the
average. Careful education and aristocratic manners are apparent.
The exquisite neuropathic eye betrays the nervous constitution. The
patient is not a complete and hopeless urning. He has hetero-sexual
feelings, but his sensual inclinations toward the opposite sex are
manifested weakly and infrequently. When nineteen, he was first
taken to a brothel by friends. He experienced no horror feminæ, had
efficient erections, and some pleasure in coitus, but not the
instinctive delight he experienced while embracing men.
Since then, patient asserts that he has had coitus six times, twice
sua sponte. He gives the assurance that he is always capable of it, but
he does it only faute de mieux, as he does masturbation, when the
sexual impulse troubles him, as a substitute for intercourse with
men. He has thought of the possibility of finding a sympathetic lady
and marrying her. He would regard marital cohabitation and
abstinence from intercourse with men as hard duties.
Since there were rudiments of hetero-sexual feelings present,
and the case could not be looked upon as hopeless, it seemed that
treatment was indicated. The indications were clear enough, but
there was no support for them in the will of the indolent patient, so
unconscious of his own position. It lay near to seek support for the
moral influence in hypnosis. The fulfillment of this hope seemed
doubtful, because the famous Hansen had tried several times, in
vain, to hypnotize him.
 At the same time, by reason of the most important social
interests of the patient, it was necessary to make another attempt. To
my great surprise, Bernheim’s procedure induced immediately a
condition of deep lethargy, with possibility of post-hypnotic
suggestion.
At the second sitting somnambulism was induced by merely
looking at him. The patient is obnoxious to suggestions of all kinds;
indeed, contractures are induced by stroking him. He is awakened by
counting three. Awakened, patient has amnesia for all the events of
the hypnotic state. Hypnosis is induced every second or third day for
the communication of hypnotic suggestions. At the same time, moral
and hydro=therapeutic measures are employed.
The hypnotic suggestions were as follow:—
1. I abhor onanism, because it makes me sick and miserable.
2. I no longer have inclination toward men; for love of men is
against religion, nature, and law.
3. I feel an inclination toward women; for woman is lovely and
desirable, and created for man.
During the sittings the patient always repeats these suggestions.
After the fourth sitting it was noticeable that, when taken into
society, he paid court to ladies. Shortly after that, when a famous
prima-donna sang, he was all enthusiasm for her. Some days later
the patient sought the address of a brothel.
At the same time, he preferred the society of young gentlemen;
but the most careful watching failed to reveal anything suspicious.
February 17th. Patient asks to be allowed to indulge in coitus,
and is very well satisfied with his experience with one of the demi-
monde.
March 16th. Up to this time, hypnosis twice a week. The patient
always passes into deep somnambulism by simply being looked at,
and, at request, repeats the suggestions. He is obnoxious to all kinds
of post-hypnotic suggestion, and, in the waking state, knows not the
least of the influences exerted on him in the hypnotic state. In the
hypnotic condition he always gives the assurance that he is free from
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