Born to Dance is known to pop music and film aficionados for a nifty bit of trivia: It’s the only one of James Stewart’s nearly 100 films, TV programs and short in which he sang. (The great star joked in That’s Entertainment that his tune, “Easy to Love,” somehow became a hit despite his rendition, but he was being unduly modest: Porter himself thought Stewart had a perfectly fine voice and, when given the opportunity to have someone else in the film sing this song, affirmed that the 27-year-old MGM contract player would do just fine.)
More crucially, Stewart was at the receiving end of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” as female lead Virginia Bruce sang it to him in an attempt to convince his character of the sincerity of her love. For those who think the classic Hollywood musical should exploit the medium’s great asset—motion—and that dance is indispensable in this regard, the film also offers an instrumental reprise of the tune, with husband-and-wife team Georges and Jalna (seen in this YouTube scene) attempting to catch some of the magic emitted by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
In his breezy recap of the Great American Songbook, The House That George Built, Wilfred Sheed broke down how the gay songwriter was able to translate his own experiences into tunes that a broader heterosexual public could experience: “He had the formula down cold for alchemizing lust into romance, and for selling the customer on a lifetime of bliss in exchange for a few trifling minutes of hoop-di-do; but mainly because, like the greatest seducers, he meant what he was saying. More than anyone, he craved the happy ending he was selling, and was even more heartbroken when he didn’t get it. For the time being, anyway.”
Porter was part of a massive exodus of Broadway tunesmiths who, when the Great Depression left one musical after another dying on the vine, decamped for Hollywood. For all the lovely weather and cushy salaries they enjoyed, however, it wasn’t easy for composers in Tinseltown. They were at the beck and call of producers who could torpedo their best work for the most idiotic of reasons. (“Over the Rainbow,” written for an even greater MGM musical than Born to Dance, The Wizard of Oz, almost suffered this indignity before wiser heads prevailed.) They might have been kings of Broadway, but in Hollywood they represented just another set of hired hands, even having to submit to auditioning their songs for producers--a prospect filling Porter, for one, with deep unease.
Richard Whiting had made the long trek out West early in the decade; the Gershwin brothers did so, like Porter, in 1936 (“They Can’t Take That Away From Me” was a product of their collaboration there); and Johnny Mercer would follow a year later. Among the few musical craftsmen to bridle at their time in the sun were Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, who, despite creating two of their greatest hits in Hollywood (“Isn’t It Romantic?” and “Blue Moon”), could not wait to get back to Broadway by mid-decade.
In a prior post on Dinah Washington, I discussed why her cover version of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” was especially memorable. But, in truth, the song has proven adaptable to many different musicians, many of whom have managed to leave their own distinctive interpretations of it. Frank Sinatra, in the 1956 hit that thrust this work forever into the Great American Songbook, lent a quality of confidence overriding all obstacles; Katharine McPhee, in a performance with Chris Botti, endowed it with flirtatiousness; and Diane Krall slowed it down to emphasize the pain and vulnerability of the lyrics (“This affair never will go so well”).
On the Web site Jazz Standards, musicologist K. J. McElrath cites several reasons for its great adaptability by jazz musicians in particular, including the number of intermediate steps that allow singers to traverse its wide Bb to the F range, and the lack of “color tones” that allow musicians to, in effect, fill in the gaps.
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