Supremes - Manhattan

About "Manhattan"

"Manhattan" is a popular song and part of the Great American Songbook. It has been performed by the Supremes, Lee Wiley, Oscar Peterson, Blossom Dearie, Tony Martin, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Mel Torme, among many others. It is often known as "We'll Have Manhattan" based on the opening line. The music was written by Richard Rodgers and the lyrics by Lorenz Hart for the 1925 revue Garrick Gaieties. It was introduced by Sterling Holloway (later the voice of the animated Winnie the Pooh) and June Cochran.

In 1925, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart had been song-writing partners for six years but only sold one song to be put in a Broadway show, "Any Old Place with You", that was bought by former vaudeville performer, now a producer, Lew Fields. On August 26, 1919, he inserted it into his current musical, A Lonely Romeo, at the Casino Theater. (Inserting new songs into running musicals was a common practice at that period.)

Since then, they had not sold another. They continued writing but were only able to donate songs to a long list of amateur or benefit shows. Rodgers was so discouraged he briefly considered going into a business when they got an offer from the prestigious Theater Guild to contribute all the songs for a two–performance benefit musical review on Sunday, May 17, 1925. Called Garrick Gaieties, it was to raise money for curtains for the Theater Guild's new theater. Given the Theater Guild’s reputation, they accepted. Rodgers also conducted the eleven member orchestra.

Halfway through the matinee's second act, Holloway and Cochran performed the song in front of a plain curtain. It stopped the show. They sang two encores, using all the lyrics they had. Rodgers and Hart knew they had a hit, but there was only one more scheduled performance. They convinced the Guild to present matinees during the next week, before the evening performances of the Guild's current production. When these performances were all standing–room only, Rodgers convinced the Guild to close its current production and replace it with Garrick Gaieties. It ran for 211 performances with both getting $50 a week in royalties and Rodgers an additional $83 a week for conducting. Within a year they had three shows on Broadway simultaneously.