"Where Harlem Sits"
Or, Two Very Different Ways To Put On The Ritz
Thanks to my buddy (and role model!) Bob Kimball for many of these factoids.
Sometimes history seems somehow wrong. Consider these three facts:
Irving Berlin wrote many of the greatest songs ever about the act of dancing, and singing as well. (The late Sammy Cahn was particularly verbose to me on this point: “Irving Berlin has written every great song about dancing, has he not?”)
Fred Astaire was the greatest song-and-dance man ever. (True - even fans of Gene Kelly will admit it - as Patricia Kelly has said, Kelly was something fundamentally different from Astaire.)
Irving Berlin wrote more songs for Astaire than anybody - not less than five major film scores.
Which makes the next point harder to accept: “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” perhaps the single greatest song to celebrate the acts of partying and dancing - not to mention “spending every dime, for a wonderful time” - was written by Irving Berlin, but not explicitly for Fred Astaire. In fact, Berlin composed it in 1930, fully five years before he would start writing for Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the 1935 Top Hat.
Yet it seems that as soon as Astaire heard the song, he knew he had to make it his own. The song was introduced in the United Artists musical film Puttin’ on the Ritz, released in March of 1930. Fred Astaire was in London at the time, and he made a recording of the song with a small group of local jazz musicians. This already made it special, since Astaire only very rarely took the opportunity to record songs that were not from his shows and, later, his films. Sixteen years later, when he was appearing in the Irving Berlin “catalog” musical film, Blue Skies (1946), he took advantage of the moment not only to build one of his memorable dance routines around “Puttin’ on the Ritz” but to make it part of his official canon.
And thus, for the last 75 years or so, “Puttin’ on the Ritz” has been a Fred Astaire song; its status as such was cemented by the songwriter himself, during the production of Blue Skies, when he rewrote the lyrics from top to bottom for this very purpose. Subsequent versions, most famously in Young Frankenstein (1974) and by the entity somehow known as “Taco” (1982), use Astaire as their point of departure.
What isn’t fully appreciated is that Berlin originally wrote “Puttin’ on the Ritz” as what he considered to be a celebration of African American musical culture. Berlin was tapping into the same aesthetic as, say, Andy Razaf and James P. Johnson in their 1934 “A Porter’s Love Song to a Chamber Maid.” The message seems to be that even though they have to work as servants and domestics, they still have a vibrant and exciting culture and internal life. Because Razaf and Johnson were Black and Berlin was not, it’s fair, almost a hundred years later, to say that Berlin was being somewhat patronizing, even if that was not his intent at the time. But I believe it’s still possible to perform the song and to enjoy it in the positive, upbeat spirit that Berlin intended.
Irving Berlin had been part of movie musical culture from the beginning. “Blue Skies” was sung by Al Jolson in the breakthrough The Jazz Singer in 1927, just a few months after it was introduced in the Broadway show Betsy at the very end of 1926. His songs were heard throughout such early talkies as The Cocoanuts (the 1929 talkie adaptation of his 1925 show), Mammy, Hallelujah, The Awakening, Lady of the Pavements, Reaching for the Moon, and others.
Berlin provided two songs for the 1930 Puttin’ on the Ritz, the title song and an underappreciated ballad, “With You.” (He also seems to have repurposed an older song into a dance number titled “Alice In Wonderland.”) The star was Harry Richman, born Henry Reichman Jr. (1895 –1972), who was part of a group of larger-than-life vaudevillians that more or less followed Jolson’s lead into early sound pictures, although I think it’s fair to say he is somewhat less fondly remembered than Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Sophie Tucker, or Fanny Brice. (Richard Barrios, in A Song in the Dark, his excellent history of the early movie musical, describes this phenomenon as the era of “dueling mammies,” a witty reference to Singin’ in the Rain. Thank you, Cosmo Brown.)
As it happens, one of the key early musicals, Sophie Tucker’s only starring vehicle,Honky Tonk (1929, in which she plays “Sophie Leonard,” a character name that became an inspiration for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel many generations later), is a lost film, while Puttin’ on the Ritz is not. Many buffs might prefer it the other way around. Despite the songs by Berlin and others, and the performances of Richman and future star Joan Bennett, Puttin’ on the Ritz is regarded as a typically tepid and creaky prehistoric talkie.
In fact, the major reason to watch the film at all today is because its title song went on to become a classic. The title number captures some of Richman’s dynamic, Jolson-esque vibe; like Asa Yoelson, Henry Reichman is less a true song-and-dance man in the Astaire sense than a buoyant entertainer, a singer who projects all over the room with a constantly-in-motion kinetic energy. No one was better at this than Cantor, but Richman holds his own.
As you can see, the number starts with Richman stepping out of a limousine, ostensibly in Harlem - representing a white man taking in the exciting Uptown nightlife. He sings the verse and then a chorus. The second chorus is Richman again, joined by two dozen high-kicking Caucasian chorines, mostly shot from what looks like the upper balcony. Then the white chorus, now including boys in striped trousers as well as girls, gets its turn.
Then we get something really surprising by 1930 musical standards: the white folks exit the stage and a big chorus of Black dancers gets about 50 seconds to show what they can do. I’m not a dance historian, but their steps seem rather like a hybrid of the older cakewalk and the newer lindy hop. It’s a great moment, and then Richman seals the deal by returning to the stage and singing another, even livelier solo chorus. The rest of the movie fairly drags, but this five-minute sequence is great fun. (I went through several versions on the YouTubes, and this is the best quality, and it’s especially fun for those who wish to sing along in Russian. We’ll have a sample of Vladimir Putin on the Ritz very shortly.)
So here are the original words, as taken from Bob Kimball’s Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin:
Have you seen the well to do
Up on Lenox Avenue
On that famous thoroughfare
With their noses in the air?
High hats and colored collars
White spats and fifteen dollars
Spending every dime
For a wonderful timeIf you're blue, and you don't know where to go to
Why don't you go where Harlem sits?
Puttin' on the RitzSpangled gowns upon the bevy of high browns
From down the levy, all misfits
Putting' on the RitzThat's where each and every Lulu-belle goes
Every Thursday evening with her swell beaus
Rubbin' elbows!Come with me and we'll attend their jubilee
And see them spend their last two bits
Puttin' on the Ritz
Some key points - nearly all of which were adjusted in the revised 1946 lyric:
“Up on Lenox Avenue” became “Up and down Park Avenue.”
“Where Harlem sits” became “Where fashion sits.” It’s kind of a fanciful line: does fashion actually sit?
“Spangled gowns / upon a bevy of high browns” refers to what Natalie Cole once described as “intra-racism,” ie, racism within the Black community itself, in that “high browns,” period slang for lighter-skinned Black people, were perceived as having greater intrinsic value. In 1946, the line was changed to “Different types who wear a day coat / Pants with stripes and cutaway coat.” No more “high browns.”
The bridge starts with “That's where each and every Lulu-belle goes.” This is the most obscure reference for 21st-century audiences. Lulu Belle refers to a hit play from 1926, written by Edward Sheldon and Charles MacArthur, and produced by David Belasco at the theater that bears his name; it ran for over a year in 1926-1927. It was considered outrageous and shocking at the time: first, it’s about an independent and free-spirited woman of color, a distinct difference from the usual portrayal of Black women in virtually every drama of the period; and, worse, she is presented as a prostitute who has a sexual affair with a white man. Both of these points were enough to get Lulu Belle banned in Boston, but it cast a huge shadow over the roles of Black actors on Broadway for more than a generation. In fact, in the 1935 revue At Home Abroad, Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz gave us a “Hottentot Potentate,” sung by Ethel Waters (and later Bobby Short) who tells us: “I brought a bottle of Chanel with me. / I brought along the script of Lulu Belle with me.” (The play was still well known enough for Paramount Pictures to film a rather sanitized version of it 20 years later, with Dorothy Lamour playing the titular role.)
Thus the original bridge is:
That's where each and every Lulu-belle goes
Every Thursday evening with her swell beaus
Rubbin' elbows
Thursday evening, famously, was the night off for the domestic staff, along with Sunday afternoon. In their 1940 show Higher and Higher, Rodgers and Hart wrote “Every Sunday Afternoon (and Thursday Night).”
The 1946 bridge goes:
Dressed up like a million-dollar trooper,
Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper.
Super duper!
(I always thought that was kind of a stretch for Berlin. Gary Cooper was a legendary movie leading man, but he was never known as a fashion plate - apparently Irving couldn’t find a rhyme for William Powell or Clifton Webb. Before 1946, no one ever aspired to dress up to look like Gary Cooper.)
The last eight bars reinforce the idea that these are hard-working people who are determined to have a good time even though they’re not wealthy themselves. (The idea of looking at people having a good time is a Tin Pan Alley, minstrelsy, and vaudeville tradition, i.e., the opening line of “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee,” “See them shuffling along…” Berlin would reverse this in “Slumming on Park Avenue” in 1937.)
Come with me and we'll attend their jubilee
And see them spend their last two bits
Puttin' on the Ritz
The revised version totally eliminates that idea, and much of the fun. Who wants to look at Rockefellers walking with sticks?
Come, let's mix where Rockefellers
Walk with sticks or umbrellas in their mitts
Puttin' on the Ritz
As mentioned, Fred Astaire recorded the song in London in March 1930, probably even before the film was released in England. You can see that he quickly realized the song was much better suited to him than it was to Harry Richman, or any of the original dueling mammies. Richman is good, but Astaire is great. Thus even as early as 1930 it’s already a Fred Astaire song. (Don’t hold it against him that there’s some Amos-n’-Andy style bantering at the start of his dance break.)
As we know, the Black big bands of the period, unlike their Caucasian counterparts, were rarely encouraged to record new songs from Broadway and Hollywood. This is generally given as the first commercial recording of the song, and, more importantly, it’s certainly the first version of the song by a major Black jazz musician, although, as it happens, he was then playing with a white orchestra. This was trumpeter Bubber Miley, famed to jazz history as the first great soloist with Duke Ellington and now, in the final phase of his tragically short career, playing with the white bandleader Leo Reisman and his Orchestra. Thanks to Miley’s expressive growling solo - brilliantly backed by Adrian Rollini on bass saxophone - this is the only early recording of the song with a true Harlem feel:
PUTTIN’ ON THE RITZ: 1939 - 1982 -
A SELECTED FEW KEY FILM & VIDEO PERFORMANCES
IDIOT’S DELIGHT (1939 film of 1936 play)
CLARK GABLE
Film historian and Max Steiner biographer Steve Smith makes the point that before Arthur Freed, MGM Pictures didn’t really want to make musicals. This number, from MGM’s 1939 adaptation of Robert E. Sherwood’s play, pretty much confirms that theory. Some idiot apparently thought it would be delightful to have Clark Gable perform “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” Gable was probably the greatest movie leading man of his time, but his discomfort in impersonating a song-and-dance man is impossible to hide; the whole number comes off kind of like a Saturday Night Live-style parody and even a putdown of the entire musical theater idiom. It’s good for a quick, cheap laugh in a compilation like That’s Entertainment, but otherwise utterly charmless. I can only imagine what Irving Berlin thought of this performance: “If that’s the best you can do - don’t do me any favors!”
Colorization doesn’t help any:
BLUE SKIES (1946)
FRED ASTAIRE
Now this is more like it! As we’ve seen, Irving Berlin rewrote the lyric from top to bottom for this movie, and it was worth the effort. Blue Skies was a huge critical and commercial success for Irving Berlin, Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, and Paramount Pictures. Astaire’s own staging and performance of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” is so breathtaking, down to his trademark ingenious camera trickery, that it’s no wonder everyone essentially forgot that the song ever existed before this movie. (Surprisingly, there doesn’t seem to be a good version of this on the YouTubes. Below is the best I’ve seen.) (Astaire would make three commercial recordings of the song, the original 1930 English Columbia version, then again for the Blue Skies album on Decca in 1946, and lastly on his his masterpiece album, The Astaire Story, 1952, with Oscar Peterson and the stars of Jazz at the Philharmonic.)
AN AFTERNOON WITH FRANK SINATRA (1959)
PETER LAWFORD, HERMOINE GINGOLD, & JULIET PROWSE
No, Sinatra doesn’t sing it himself on this 1959 Timex-sponsored special; rather, we hear three guest stars, who all happen to be former residents of the British Empire. The South African dancer Juliet Prowse would, famously, come close to marrying The Chairman. (If only she had, rather than Farrow or Marx, we’d all be better off!) This is such a goofy take, I can’t help but wonder somehow if Mel Brooks happened to be watching in 1959. Here’s how “Puttin’ on the Ritz” might sound if it had been written by Noel Coward. “Be still my heart! - cha cha cha!”
THE FRANCIS LANGFORD SPECIAL (1960)
JOHNNY MATHIS
A decidedly odd but fun syndicated TV special directed by Hollywood great Frank Tashlin and hosted by veteran singer Frances Langford, with guests Robert Cummings, her radio partner Don Ameche, celebrated soprano Mary Costa (singing “Sempre Libre”), not to mention The Three Stooges. Johnny Mathis comes off very well here, with percussionist Jack Costanzo, a quartet of male dancers making like basketball players and a very snazzy arrangement. Mr. Mathis sings it very convincingly, rather like the lovechild of Nat King Cole and Eartha Kitt.
THE BELL TELEPHONE HOUR:
“MUSIC OF THE MOVIES” (1966)
RAY BOLGER & ANN MILLER
Even better, and in great quality too. Anticipating My One and Only, here’s Ray Bolger and Ann Miller, both in Fred Astaire drag. They’re a marvelous team here, truly singing and dancing up a storm, and considerably more restrained than we expect them to be, in a way that honors Astaire. They’re both Ritz-ing it up in a way that suggests the mirror image of Astaire and Garland as Red Skelton-style comic hobos in Berlin’s “A Couple of Swells”; here, Bolger and Miller are a couple of actual swells. To me, this is as good as TV variety shows ever got, and probably the overall best-ever performance of the song after Astaire.
THE MCGUIRE SISTERS
UNSPECIFIED SUNDAY NIGHT VARIETY SHOW (1965)
Here’s a bonus for Slouching Towards Birdlanders - I don’t believe this is anywhere on the YouTubes: the McGuire Sisters -perhaps even more fun to look at than to listen to - in 1966, as part of an Irving Berlin “Spring” segment that starts with “Easter Parade” and goes into “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” (And other songs … this is a rare example of a segment that, as you will see, was obviously pre-recorded and pre-filmed, and not recorded live on this particular long-running Sunday show.)
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974)
GENE WILDER & PETER BOYLE
Mel Brooks has said that it was Gene Wilder’s idea - along with the general idea for the film in general - to include Irving Berlin’s song in this masterpiece 1974 horror spoof. Mel has admitted that he was dead set against it, but by the time they finished filming the number, he knew he was wrong and that it would be the hit of the film. He was right! Ironically, although it’s a parody, mostly of the classic Universal horror films and, in this sequence, movie musicals in general, this is the way an entire generation first came to know and love this classic song. Mel reluctantly included it in the Broadway version of Young Frankenstein; I know he would have much preferred to write his own Fred Astaire / Irving Berlin style song-and-dance number, but he couldn’t argue with this kind of success.
TACO (1982)
Bonus: RANDY RAINBOW (2017)
There was a lot that I didn’t like, or didn’t fully appreciate, in the early 1980s - The Talking Heads and Buster Poindexter, among other things - both of which I have grown to love in the intervening 40 years. This, however, doesn’t look or sound any better than it did in the early days of MTV. I can’t for the life of me fathom why it was popular at the time, although, it’s pleasing to note that subsequent performances continue to use Astaire as a template rather than this short-careered German individual. In fact, maybe I won’t include the link here … if you really feel like you have to see it again, well then, as Ronnie Graham says in Blazing Saddles, “Son, you’re on your own, hey.” Irving Berlin was still alive in 1982, but after seeing this, he would have demanded his two bits back. Come to think of it, I’d much rather share Randy Rainbow’s version, “Putin and the Ritz.”
And … finally! Elizabeth Zimmer shared this dance-driven version by Herb Alpert:
one more bonus - here’s a song that isn’t heard nearly enough, Irving Berlin’s lovely ballad from Puttin’ on the Ritz, “With You” - first in a vintage performance by Johnny Marvin and then a more modern version by the young Mel Torme:
Very Special thanks to the fabulous Ms. Elizabeth Zimmer, for expert proofreading of this page, and scanning for typos, mistakes, and other assorted boo-boos!
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There's no disputing it's Astaire's song, but I'll die on the hill of defending Gable's version. The movie is problematic (Breen Office sanitizing and Shearer being Shearer), but I find a great charm in Harry Van and Les Blondes.
As usual, you fill in a missing piece of my musical knowledge by putting it on....