Embraceable You is often reported to have been written especially for Ginger Rogers, who sang it with Allen Kearns in the Gershwins' 1930 musical comedy hit, Girl Crazy. The fact is that it had been composed the year before, with Rogers nowhere in sight, for Florenz Ziegfeld's abortive East Is West, which, on a sudden whim, Ziegfeld shelved to produce the richly haphazard Show Girl. In Girl Crazy, the song became a duet as New York playboy Danny Churchill, exiled by his wealthy father to the Wild West wastes, recalls the life that late he led (in one of Ira Gershwin's smartest lyrics) —

Dozens of girls would storm up,

I had to lock my door.

Somehow I couldn't warm up

To one before.

What was it that controlled me?

What kept my love life lean?

My intuition told me

You'd come on the scene

to which the Rogers character, cowgirl postmistress Molly Gray, responds,

I went about reciting

"Here's one who'll never fall!"

But I'm afraid the writing

Is on the wall.

My nose I used to turn up

When you'd besiege my heart;

Now I completely burn up

When you're slow to start

before coasting into the immortal refrain which imperishably framed the Jazz Age's effervescent vision of romance —

Embrace me, My sweet embraceable you.

Embrace me, You irreplaceable you.

Just one look at you, my heart grew tipsy in me;

You and you alone bring out the gypsy in me!

I love all the many charms about you; Above all I want my arms about you.

If Girl Crazy was largely airheaded fluff, it was nonetheless gorgeous—a richly resonant summing-up of an era going under in the wake of the Great Depression—and Embraceable You, balancing the brassy I Got Rhythm, was its crowning glory.

© All Music Guide

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This Broadway show from the later career of the Gershwin brothers was one of George and Ira's Broadway, running for 272 performances. This was by no means a record, but the show became legendary for another reason: the number of great careers it launched. Ethel Merman became a star here belting out the show's biggest number, "I Got Rhythm." The young dancer propelled to stardom was Ginger Rogers. The pit band included Benny Goodman, Jimmy Dorsey, Red Nichols, Glenn Miller, Jack Teagarden, and Gene Krupa.

The plot involved a rich young man whose father has sent him West to a ranch in order to keep him away from girls. In addition to "I Got Rhythm," hit songs included "Embraceable You" and "But Not For Me."

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According to Isaac Goldberg, Gershwin's first biographer, I Got Rhythm originated as a slow number in the Gershwins' 1928 flop, Treasure Girl, which closed on Broadway after 68 performances. And, as was the case with Embraceable You, it was to have been included in Florenz Ziegfeld's East Is West, for which the Gershwins compiled a considerable score and which never made it to the boards. In the upshot, both numbers found a definitive place in the Aarons and Freedley production, Girl Crazy, which opened at the Alvin Theater on October 14, 1930, for a run of 272 performances. Embraceable You was taken, with stage veteran Allen Kearns, by the 19-year-old Ginger Rogers, while I Got Rhythm—in its familiar jauntily upbeat version—featured 23-year-old Ethel Merman making her Broadway debut.

Merman was Vinton Freedley's find. Having heard her singing between movies at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, he immediately engaged her. She auditioned soon after for the Gershwins in Sam and Delilah and I Got Rhythm, and George, always obliging, offered to make changes to suit her. "They will do very nicely, Mr. Gershwin," she replied. And they did. Ira Gershwin recalled "her assurance, timing and delivery both as comedienne and singer—with a no-nonsense voice that could reach not only the standees but the ticket takers in the lobby."

I'm chipper all the day,

Happy with my lot.

How do I get that way?

Look at what I've got:

I got rhythm,

I got music,

I got my man —

Who could ask for anything more?

Thus brilliantly launched, the tune continued to hold a fascination for George, who devoted one of his more elaborate transcriptions to it in George Gershwin's Song Book, published in 1932, and lovingly garlanded it with sublime invention in one of his finest instrumental works, the Variations on "I Got Rhythm," for piano and orchestra, in 1934.

© All Music Guide

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In the Gershwins' 1930 hit musical, Girl Crazy, cowgirl postmistress Molly Gray, of the Wild West boondocks, vacillates between contempt and hopeless love for New York playboy Danny Churchill. Having already sung "Embraceable You" with Danny in the first act, by the second and final act her feelings have definitely shifted toward the latter —

Old Man Sunshine listen you!

Never tell me, "Dreams come true!"

Just try it

And I'll start a riot...

—though not without a large dose of lingering ambivalence —

They're writing songs of love,

But not for me.

A lucky star's above

But not for me

— reflected in the gently rocking melody, which rises in the anthem-like Gershwin manner:

With love to lead the way

I've found more clouds of gray

Than any Russian play could guarantee....

sung by the 19-year-old Ginger Rogers, doing her second Broadway show.

© All Music Guide

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Embraceable You is often reported to have been written especially for Ginger Rogers, who sang it with Allen Kearns in the Gershwins' 1930 musical comedy hit, Girl Crazy. The fact is that it had been composed the year before, with Rogers nowhere in sight, for Florenz Ziegfeld's abortive East Is West, which, on a sudden whim, Ziegfeld shelved to produce the richly haphazard Show Girl. In Girl Crazy, the song became a duet as New York playboy Danny Churchill, exiled by his wealthy father to the Wild West wastes, recalls the life that late he led (in one of Ira Gershwin's smartest lyrics) —

Dozens of girls would storm up,

I had to lock my door.

Somehow I couldn't warm up

To one before.

What was it that controlled me?

What kept my love life lean?

My intuition told me

You'd come on the scene

to which the Rogers character, cowgirl postmistress Molly Gray, responds,

I went about reciting

"Here's one who'll never fall!"

But I'm afraid the writing

Is on the wall.

My nose I used to turn up

When you'd besiege my heart;

Now I completely burn up

When you're slow to start

before coasting into the immortal refrain which imperishably framed the Jazz Age's effervescent vision of romance —

Embrace me, My sweet embraceable you.

Embrace me, You irreplaceable you.

Just one look at you, my heart grew tipsy in me;

You and you alone bring out the gypsy in me!

I love all the many charms about you; Above all I want my arms about you.

If Girl Crazy was largely airheaded fluff, it was nonetheless gorgeous—a richly resonant summing-up of an era going under in the wake of the Great Depression—and Embraceable You, balancing the brassy I Got Rhythm, was its crowning glory.

© All Music Guide

###

According to Isaac Goldberg, Gershwin's first biographer, I Got Rhythm originated as a slow number in the Gershwins' 1928 flop, Treasure Girl, which closed on Broadway after 68 performances. And, as was the case with Embraceable You, it was to have been included in Florenz Ziegfeld's East Is West, for which the Gershwins compiled a considerable score and which never made it to the boards. In the upshot, both numbers found a definitive place in the Aarons and Freedley production, Girl Crazy, which opened at the Alvin Theater on October 14, 1930, for a run of 272 performances. Embraceable You was taken, with stage veteran Allen Kearns, by the 19-year-old Ginger Rogers, while I Got Rhythm—in its familiar jauntily upbeat version—featured 23-year-old Ethel Merman making her Broadway debut.

Merman was Vinton Freedley's find. Having heard her singing between movies at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, he immediately engaged her. She auditioned soon after for the Gershwins in Sam and Delilah and I Got Rhythm, and George, always obliging, offered to make changes to suit her. "They will do very nicely, Mr. Gershwin," she replied. And they did. Ira Gershwin recalled "her assurance, timing and delivery both as comedienne and singer—with a no-nonsense voice that could reach not only the standees but the ticket takers in the lobby."

I'm chipper all the day,

Happy with my lot.

How do I get that way?

Look at what I've got:

I got rhythm,

I got music,

I got my man —

Who could ask for anything more?

Thus brilliantly launched, the tune continued to hold a fascination for George, who devoted one of his more elaborate transcriptions to it in George Gershwin's Song Book, published in 1932, and lovingly garlanded it with sublime invention in one of his finest instrumental works, the Variations on "I Got Rhythm," for piano and orchestra, in 1934.

© All Music Guide

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