Where is someone to watch over me from

During the second act, she appears on stage alone pouring out her heart to a rag doll. Kay, a British aristocrat disguised as a housemaid in love with an American playboy is feeling lonesome and insecure. She is despairing of her chances for winning his affection, or, for that matter, of ever finding anybody to care for her. She shares her feelings of needing someone to watch over her with the doll.

Lawrence is accompanied by His Majesty's Theatre Orchestra. She also recorded the song with piano accompaniment only in , during the show's New York run.

Listen below. In all these venues Lawrence appeared in the title role. After performances in New York, Oh, Kay! She was welcomed home as the local girl who had swept Broadway off its feet. The show had a bifurcated birthright, the score coming from the American Gershwins, the book from the British writing team of P. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton. In fact, Wodehouse and Bolton worked on the show mostly on their side of the pond, while the Gershwins, the shows producers, Alex Aarons and Vinton Freedly, as well as the director, the choreographer, etc.

The broad outline of Oh, Kay! The show also satirizes, according to Gershwin biographer Howard Pollack , "American self-righteousness," and includes humor that was "unusually adult" for the typical romantic comedy of the time. The take-away from this modern day musical fairy tale is that millionaires, aristocrats and even some petty criminals can all live together happily ever after if they are charming enough and sing wonderful songs. One of the most appealing characters is Shorty McGee, a small-time hood, played by Victor Moore the comic actor who a decade later would play Fred Astaire's sidekick in the movie, Swing Time.

As Philip Furia points out, Guy Bolton felt his and Wodehouse's book for the show, after much doctoring, had managed to "capture the rhythm of the era.

Most subsequent versions, including one staged by Wodehouse and Bolton themselves in , have been adapted to try to catch the rhythm of succeeding eras, but with limited success. And, we might add, as is so often the case, a song like "Someone To Watch Over Me," that has taken its place in The Songbook , is still as vital, relevant and appealing today as it was then, even while the show from which it came has been largely forgotten.

Apparently, according to Ira Gershwin's recollection, the melody for "Someone to Watch Over Me" was written before the Gershwin brothers had a clear idea of where it would be used in Oh, Kay! It was not unusual for the songs in Gershwin shows of the period to be at least sketched out before their exact use was determined.

So while they were awaiting the snail-mail delivery of the book from Wodehouse and Bolton, George came up with a melody that was, as Ira tells it , "fast and jazzy," a rhythm tune that would most likely, had it been left alone, have turned out to be a "dance-and-ensemble number" to be used somewhere in the show. However, at one point while George was playing it for Ira, something caused him to slow down the tempo.

One account suggests it occurred when their sister Frances Gershwin walked into the room and distracted George. In any case, upon hearing the melody played this way, both George and Ira were struck by its potential to become a "wistful and warm" ballad. They then decided to retain the slower version but put it aside until they discovered the right place in the show to use it.

Only then would Ira would create an appropriate lyric Lyrics on Several Occasions , p , paperback Ed. George playing his "fast and jazzy" version of "Someone to Watch Over Me" written with this tempo before the song had a title or a lyric, recorded at Columbia Record Studios, London, on November 8, , the day of the opening on Broadway of Oh, Kay! George was known for his capacity to multi-task.

Even after a place for the song had been found and the lyric written, the matter was not settled. First, during the Philadelphia previews, the producers put it in the first act, but by the time the show got to Broadway, it had been moved to halfway through Act 2 between two contrasting rhythm songs: the duet " Do, Do, Do " and the production dance number "Fidgety Feet.

Every great song presumably has its right moment to be introduced to the world. The idea for Lawrence to include a rag doll in her performance of "Someone To Watch Over Me" originated with none other than the versatile multitasker George Gershwin himself, who was apparently not only the composer but a momentary propman, choreographer and director. He recollects, "This doll was a strange looking object I found in a Philadelphia toy store and gave to Miss Lawrence with the suggestion that she use it in the number.

Gershwin's thought was that the singer's vulnerability and need for someone to care for her would be intensified by having her alone on stage with only a doll to sing to. It certainly worked for the audience. Jablonski quotes one of the Philadelphia reviewers on Lawrence's performance: She would have "wrung the withers of even the most hard-hearted of those present" Jablonski , p.

Gershwin scholar Michael Feinstein, writes that there is a photograph of Lawrence with the rag doll in which she appears "impossibly coy," yet Ira described her performance to him as "pure magic," and "by all accounts mesmerizing" Feinstein , p.

He explains this by noting that the only direction George Gershwin included on the sheet music was " sherzando " in a playful or sportive manner , implying that Lawrence and the orchestra must have done it that way.

That Gertrude Lawrence sang the song " scherzando " on stage, despite what Wilder may have remembered hearing, was not the case. The notion that she did runs counter to Ira Gershwin's comments in his Lyrics on Several Occasions published originally in There he states that the music originally marked "scherzando" was intended to be used for a dance number, but when George and he realized it would work better as a ballad See above.

This all occurred before George and Ira had even seen Wodehouse's and Bolton's book. The spot for the song finally settled on came mid-way through act 2 and found her singing it as a ballad. Although there is no known recording of Lawrence's on stage performance, her New York studio recording as well as her London recording , are presumably both taken at similar tempos as her contemporaneous stage performances, a tempo described by Ted Gioia as "an animated medium pulse" not atypical for the performance of a ballad.

Either Wilder's threshold tempo for a ballad is quite low or he must have heard or remembered incorrectly how Lawrence sang it. He is, of course, exactly correct about "the ballad quality associated with the song" ever since. The episode, "Thanks for the Memory", originally aired on 20 September So now it's just my song. Liz Torres performed the song to her own piano playing in the episode, "It's a Wonderful Leap — May 10, " of Quantum Leap , which originally aired on April 1, Sam Beckett is in the body of a cabbie who is destined to be shot trying to win a NYC cab medallion.

Angelita plays the song for the cabbie's father, a widower; it was "their song" for the father and his late wife. It served as the background music for the finale episode of the second season of Friends entitled "The One With Barry and Mindy's Wedding".

In , Seth Rollins sang on auditions for Season 9. In an episode of Cold Case entitled "Wings", the Frank Sinatra version of the song appeared at the end of the episode. Lady Gaga performed it on the Today Show during their summer concert series on July 9, Tom Berenger commented: "Ridley likes humor during very heavy scenes as well as something serious in comedic scenes. I like to work that way too, to keep a nice balance.

Cops aren't always busting each others' chops. There's always this humor going on. They do it for the same reason we do it in the film, to break the stress and to keep the energy alive". Some movie posters for this film featured a long blurb that read: "He's a streetwise cop who just made detective.

She's a stunning sophisticate who just saw a murder. A killer is the only thing they had in common. Until tonight. Someone to Watch Over Me. A classic thriller with a twist of romance ". Screenwriter "Howard Franklin delivered the script in the winter of ", said director Sir Ridley Scott who added, "for various reasons, I was already into my next project, Legend , which took me to England for two years.

The film really stayed on the shelf without much movement on it until I finished in England". Scott explained: "I go on instinct and frankly, I'd been casting for months, and couldn't quite place the individual to portray the central character of Hike Keegan.

However, he completely pulled it off and managed to make the character both sympathetic and vulnerable". For the part of Claire, director Sir Ridley Scott made it a priority to cast a sympathetic contemporary woman. Scott said: "I found Mimi Rogers in the best possible way, by looking at a lot of people, and then seeing her three times to be absolutely sure.

That in itself can be thought of as being pretty unsympathetic. It's a very delicate role to play. The character has everything. Yet she has to show vulnerability and at the same time demonstrate sensibility and normalcy within her rarefied environment. I found that in Mimi". This movie was made and released about sixty-one years after the song was first performed.

The Vangelis track "Memories of Green" featuring on the soundtrack was previously heard in director Sir Ridley Scott's earlier movie Blade Runner Vangelis acted as composer on that movie as well as on Scott's Conquest of Paradise Known for portraying varying and wide-ranging roles, Tom Berenger's interest in "Someone to Watch Over Me" was in keeping with his reputation of an ever-changing screen persona.

Berenger said: "I've never played a cop before. I liked the character because even though he is the hero of the story, he has negative qualities and makes some big mistakes. I always find that interesting, a character with a dilemma to face, confronting his personal morality". On 19th January , the filming company moved to The Burbank Studios. There, production designer Jim Bissell had built the interior of Mike and Ellie's house, as well as Claire Gregory's palatial apartment.

Oxford, Lovely article. I often lecture on Gershwin and this information will be a worthy addition to share. They even recreate the scene from the show featuring her singing it to the doll. I learned so much. Thanks for the history lesson. An impressive share! And he in fact bought me breakfast simply because I discovered it for him… lol.

So let me reword this….