"SPRING IS HERE" (1938)

The ballad "Spring Is Here" inadvertently became a swan song duet for Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, the legendary musical film team of the 1930s and early 1940s. If their film would have been the song's first outing, the song might have met the same fate. However, four years before its film debut,"Spring Is Here" was introduced by Dennis King and Vivienne Segal in the musical comedy I Married an Angel. It was the second song with that title by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. The first song, an upbeat tune that was quickly forgotten, was written for a 1928 Broadway show of the same name that primarily is remembered for having introduced the standard "With a Song in My Heart." In May of 1938 I Married an Angel opened at the Schubert Theater on Broadway and ran for 338 performances. Critics liked the play, and the New York Times pronounced it, "One of the best musical comedies for many seasons...it perches on the top shelf of the Rodgers & Hart music cabinet."
The play wasn't supposed to come first. In 1933 Rodgers and Hart had planned to collaborate with playwright Moss Hart to produce a film version of I Married an Angel starring Jeanette MacDonald, but that was shelved when MGM decided the story of an angel losing her wings and her virginity simultaneously was too risqué. Five years later, MGM released the film rights to the songwriters, provided that the studio retain the right to film the stage production. Deciding not to use the Moss Hart scenario, Rodgers and Hart adapted their play from a play that had been a hit in Budapest, Angyalt Vettem Feleségül (I Married an Angel) by Hungarian János Vaszary. In the play an angel comes to earth and marries a Count, a playboy banker with a debauched lifestyle who has became disillusioned with women and vows to marry only an angel. Jazzstandards.com provides the following description from Richard Rodgers regarding the plot, "The theme of the play was that it’s possible for someone to be too good. Our angel nearly ruins her husband’s life by her truthful but undiplomatic remarks. It is only when, under the expert tutelage of Vivienne Segal [who plays the sister of the Count], she becomes devilish instead of angelic that the marriage is saved." Dennis King as the Count and Segal sang "Spring Is Here" as a duet. The angel, played by ballerina Vera Zorina, didn’t sing, but instead danced in two George Ballanchine choreographed ballets.
In 1942 MGM finally did make a film version of I Married an Angel starring Nelson Eddy as the Count and Jeanette MacDonald as the angel. With MacDonald cast as the angel, it became a singing role and she and Eddy sang the "Spring Is Here" duet instead of the Count and his sister. That was just one of the milder changes made to the play as it moved from Broadway to Hollywood. Censorship was more rigorous in films than on the stage, and the script underwent substantial revisions at the hands of the censors. The result was an incoherent shamble of a film that bore little resemblance to the original play.
After the success of the Broadway musical comedy, reviewers were expecting an equally enchanting film. When the film didn’t deliver, reviews were harsh. Even the Rodgers and Hart songs couldn’t save the film from reviewer wrath. The New York Post critic began with: "Fortunately this reviewer did not see the stage production of I Married an Angel, so you will be spared odious comparisons..." The New York Times, which had praised the Broadway play, wrote, "A more painful and clumsy desecration of a lovely fiction has not been perpetrated in years." Variety said, "The slick Broadway musical emerges on the screen as a slow moving, poorly acted, expensive production." Time magazine added to the critical chorus saying that it "vigorously rubs the bloom from the wings of the brisk, fresh, imaginative musical that ran on Broadway." Probably unfairly, Eddy and MacDonald bore the brunt of the criticism and it became the last film they made together.
Unlike Eddy and MacDonald, "Spring Is Here" emerged unscathed from the film debacle, having already become a hit song. Rodgers and Hart had been writing songs together since 1919, and "Spring Is Here" was one of their later songs, written just five years before Hart’s death in 1943. William Zinsser in his book Easy to Remember says, "The late Rodgers & Hart songs that linger in our emotional memory tend to be the losers’ laments. ...In "Spring Is Here" the phrase "maybe it’s because nobody loves me" is a cry of pain set to ten consecutive rising notes, followed by an abrupt drop to the wistful "spring is here," followed by the final drop – almost a whisper – to the ironic "I hear." I think of these late Rogers & Hart ballads as women’s songs. No other American songwriters have given women cabaret artists such a sensitive literature."
Although Zinsser may have categorized the song as a favorite of female singers, male singers were the first to take it to the pop charts. It charted twice in 1938: a recording by Leo Reisman and His Orchestra with vocalist Felix Knight peaked at number fourteen, and a recording by vocalist Buddy Clark reached number nineteen. Since then, numerous female jazz vocalists, including Chris Connor, Ella Fitzgerald, Maxine Sullivan and Tierney Sutton, have covered the song. Instrumentalists covering the song include Bob Brookmeyer, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Tino Derado, and Dave Pell.
In his book American Popular Song, composer and author Alec Wilder described "Spring Is Here" as "another shattering ballad." He was awed by Rodgers and Hart’s songwriting genius and wrote, "Truly, these men are fantastically talented! Each time I reach for another song I think, "Well, along about now there has to be a drop-off. They simply can’t maintain this level of excellence." And what happens? "Spring Is Here! ...The lyric is Hart at his best, including the closing line: "Spring is here, I hear." Considering the loneliness of the character, this line wryly sums up his point of view." Hart struggled with alcoholism and depression for much of his life and his lyrics often reflect a mordant, world-weary view. Rodgers said of his songwriting partner, "His lyrics knew...that love was not especially devised for boy and girl idiots of fourteen and he expressed himself to that extent."