"The Saga of Jenny" is a popular song written for the 1941 Broadway musical Lady in the Dark , with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ira Gershwin, considered now as a blues standard.
The music is marked "Allegretto quasi andantino"; Gershwin describes it as "a sort of blues bordello". [1]
It was premiered by Gertrude Lawrence in the role of Liza Elliott, the editor of a fashion magazine. In the context of the show, the song comes in a dream sequence in which Elliott defends her indecision about marriage by telling the tale of "a girl named Jenny/Whose virtues were varied and many—/Excepting that she was inclined/Always to make up her mind", until she "kicked the bucket at 76." Jenny's decisive nature is blamed for multiple disasters, including forcing the necessity of the United States' Good Neighbor Policy. The moral of the song is "don't make up your mind."
It followed the Danny Kaye song "Tschaikowsky (and Other Russians)", and in Kaye's original recording, he sings the passages about Liza Elliot's inability to make up her mind.
The song was included in the 1944 Hollywood film Lady in the Dark and also features in a dance sequence in the 1968 musical Star! , with Julie Andrews portraying Gertrude Lawrence.
Artistes who have recorded the song include Gertrude Lawrence, [2] Dawn Upshaw, [3] Lotte Lenya, Julie Andrews, Ute Lemper, Danny Kaye, Mildred Bailey, and by Benny Goodman & His Orchestra with Helen Forrest.
The song was re-written in 1988 by the songwriter and librettist Stephen Sondheim for his great friend musician and co-writer of the musical West Side Story Leonard Bernstein's 70th birthday with the ironic title of "The Saga of Lenny, with no apologies to Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin". The song was sung on that occasion by Bernstein's friend and actress Lauren Bacall.
Ira Gershwin was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs in the English language of the 20th century. With George, he wrote more than a dozen Broadway shows, featuring songs such as "I Got Rhythm", "Embraceable You", "The Man I Love" and "Someone to Watch Over Me". He was also responsible, along with DuBose Heyward, for the libretto to George's opera Porgy and Bess.
Gertrude Lawrence was an English actress, singer, dancer and musical comedy performer known for her stage appearances in the West End of London and on Broadway in New York.
Lady in the Dark is a musical with music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and book and direction by Moss Hart. It was produced by Sam Harris. The protagonist, Liza Elliott, is the unhappy editor of a fashion magazine who is undergoing psychoanalysis. The musical ran on Broadway in 1941, and in the United Kingdom in 1981. A film version was released in 1944, and a live television special followed in 1954.
John Francis Mauceri is an American conductor, producer, educator and writer. Since making his professional conducting debut almost half a century ago, he has appeared with most of the world's great orchestras, guest-conducted at the premiere opera houses, produced and musically supervised Tony and Olivier Award-winning Broadway musicals, and served as university faculty and administrator. Through his varied career, he has taken the lead in the preservation and performance of many genres of music and supervised and conducted important premieres by composers as diverse as Debussy, Stockhausen, Korngold, Hindemith, Bernstein, Sibelius, Ives, Elfman and Shore. He is also a leading performer of music banned by the Third Reich and especially music of Hollywood's émigré composers.
Ute Gertrud Lemper is a German singer and actress. Her roles in musicals include playing Sally Bowles in the original Paris production of Cabaret, for which she won the 1987 Molière Award for Best Newcomer, and Velma Kelly in the revival of Chicago in both London and New York, which won her the 1998 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
Ben Bagley was an American musical producer and record producer.
A Kurt Weill Cabaret was a Broadway and off-Broadway production featuring the music of Kurt Weill. A precursor, The World of Kurt Weill in Song, opened off-Broadway at One Sheridan Square in the West Village on June 6, 1963, starring Will Holt and Martha Schlamme. In 1979, it was revised as A Kurt Weill Cabaret and opened at the Bijou Theater on Broadway, with Alvin Epstein and Martha Schlamme and ran for 72 performances. The Harold Clurman Theatre showed it in 1984.
My Kind of Broadway is a 1965 studio album by Frank Sinatra. It is a collection of songs from various musicals, pieced together from various recording sessions over the previous four years. The album features songs from nine arrangers and composers, the most ever on a single Sinatra album. While the title of the album is "My Kind of Broadway", both the Gershwin songs on the album "They Can't Take That Away From Me" and "Nice Work If You Can Get It" were written by George and Ira Gershwin for films and not for Broadway musicals.
"Tschaikowsky " is a patter song with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and music by Kurt Weill, first performed by American comedian Danny Kaye in the 1941 Broadway musical Lady in the Dark. Gershwin used the spelling "Tschaikowsky" from the German transliteration in place of the more widely accepted modern transliteration Tchaikovsky.
Star! is a 1968 American biographical musical film directed by Robert Wise and starring Julie Andrews. The screenplay by William Fairchild is based on the life and career of British performer Gertrude Lawrence.
All that Jazz: The Best of Ute Lemper is a CD from the German singer Ute Lemper released September 1, 1998. The CD consists of 20 tracks.
"Being Alive" is a song from the musical Company with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The song appears at the end of act two and is sung by Robert, a 35-year-old bachelor at the center of the show, who "...realizes being a lone wolf isn't all it's cracked up to be ... he declares that he wants to take the chance, be afraid, get his heart broken—or whatever happens when you decide to love and be loved."
Sarah Vaughan Sings Broadway: Great Songs from Hit Shows is a 1958 studio album by Sarah Vaughan.
Where Do We Go from Here? is a 1945 romantic musical comedy-fantasy film directed by Gregory Ratoff and starring Fred MacMurray, Joan Leslie, June Haver, Gene Sheldon, Anthony Quinn and Fortunio Bonanova. It was produced by Twentieth Century-Fox. Joan Leslie's singing voice was dubbed by Sally Sweetland.
Mark Nadler is a New York City-based cabaret performer, actor, and comedic pianist. He has been described as "one of New York's most acclaimed singer/pianists" and a "virtuoso" of classical piano.
Lady in the Dark is a 1944 American musical film directed by Mitchell Leisen, from a screenplay by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett that is based on the 1941 musical of the same name by Moss Hart. The film stars Ginger Rogers as a magazine editor, who although successful, finds herself on the edge of a breakdown while juggling her feelings for three prospective suitors, played by Ray Milland, Warner Baxter, and Jon Hall.
"My Ship" is a popular song written for the 1941 Broadway musical Lady in the Dark, with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ira Gershwin.
20th Century Blues is a live 1996 album by English singer Marianne Faithfull, in collaboration with pianist Paul Trueblood.
Sinatra: World On a String is a 2016 box set album of live performances by the American singer Frank Sinatra, recorded in Italy in 1953, Monaco in 1958, Sydney in 1961, Cairo in 1979, and the Dominican Republic in 1982. The performances are chronicled on four compact discs with a further DVD of a 1962 concert in Tokyo with short films and Italian chocolate adverts featuring Sinatra during his world tour of 1962.
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill is a musical revue with a book by Gene Lerner, music by Kurt Weill, and lyrics by various songwriting partners Weill worked with over his career. The plot follows Weill's life as he begins his career in Germany writing the music for controversial musicals, through his journey fleeing Nazi persecution, immigrating to the United States, and becoming successful on Broadway. Songs featured include those Weill collaborated on with Maxwell Anderson, Marc Blitzstein, Bertolt Brecht, Jacques Deval, Michael Feingold, Ira Gershwin, Paul Green, Langston Hughes, Alan Jay Lerner, Ogden Nash, George Tabori and Arnold Weinstein.