There are a couple of odd facts about My Funny Valentine.

First, it has nothing to do with Valentine’s Day, even though the lyric mentions it. A young girl first sang it to a character named Valentine in the musical Babes in Arms.

Second, the song made no impression on anyone until more than a decade after the musical closed.

Nowadays, the team of Rogers and Hammerstein has become synonymous with the classic Broadway musical. But before Rogers and Hammerstein, the team of Rogers and Hart dominated Broadway.

With Oscar Hammerstein, the lyric came first, and then Richard Rogers set it to music. The theatrical world remembers the team primarily for the shows. With Lorenz Hart, Rogers usually wrote a tune and Hart fitted it with lyrics. Most of the shows have long since been forgotten, but many of their songs became standards, swiftly or otherwise. 

Babes in Arms

From a dress rehearsal Some rights reserved by Nic McPhee

Rogers and Hart saw some children making up rules for a game as they went along during one of their walks through Central Park. They wondered what such children might do if they needed some money. Perhaps they’d try to put on their own show.

Rogers thought there might be come commercial advantage to a show with a cast that lacked established stars. Hart also liked the idea of writing a musical for fresh talent. The idea resulted in Babes in Arms. The cast of the major roles ranged in age from Harold Nicholas (12) to Ray Heatherton (25). Mitzi Green, the singer who introduced My Funny Valentine, was 16. The show launched several of them to stardom.

Babes in Arms ran for 289 performances on Broadway from April to December 1937. It has never been revived there. In 1939, Hollywood issued a movie called Babes in Arms starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. It omitted most of the original songs, so it shares only the title and bare plot outline with the Broadway musical.

The Broadway production was told as a musical play within a play, in which some kids decide to put on a revue to raise money and keep from being sent to a work farm. All but one of the songs come within preparations for the revue. No other Rogers and Hart play produced so many hit songs. One critic describes it as having five blockbuster hits and five really good songs.

Only My Funny Valentine comes within the main story. Rogers and Hart wanted to write songs that advanced the story line. They believed in My Funny Valentine so much that, in the course of production, they changed the main character’s name so Mitzi Green’s character (Susie) could sing it to someone named Valentine.

The reception of My Funny Valentine

Mitzi Green publicity photo for Argentinean Magazine, October 1932. Public domain from Wikimedia Commons>/a>

While several of the songs in the musical became instant hits, somehow My Funny Valentine did not. Mitzi Green never recorded it. Only a version for two pianos appeared at first. It never even appeared in the first three or four compilations of Rogers and Hart songs. Neither collaborator ever described how they got the idea for it.

The Hal McIntyre orchestra with Ruth Gaylor recorded it in 1945. That recording briefly made it into the top 20 on the charts but was quickly forgotten. It may have brought the song to the attention of jazz singers and instrumentalists. My Funny Valentine only became a hit in the late 1940s and early 1950s when some of them began to sing it regularly in clubs.

Chet Baker first recorded My Funny Valentine, as an instrumental piece, in 1952. He sang it for a recording in 1954 and eventually recorded it more than 100 times. Frank Sinatra sang it on the album Songs for Young Lovers in 1954. This album often receives the credit for launching My Funny Valentine as a blockbuster hit.

Since then, more than 600 artists, instrumentalists and vocalists alike, have recorded it. A customer in a record store supposedly asked if it had any records that didn’t include the song. According to legend, at least, one club owner in New York had a clause in its standard contract for vocalists that they would not sing My Funny Valentine.

Once it finally started, the popularity of My Funny Valentine shows no signs of stopping.  Since Sinatra’s initial recording, at least one recording, and sometimes more than a dozen, has appeared every year up to and including last year, 2018. The only exception appears to be 1972.

The character of My Funny Valentine

Richard Rogers (seated) and Lorenz Hart. New York World Telegram, 1936. Public domain from Wikimedia Commons

Although Rogers usually wrote a tune and gave it to Hart to set, they may have worked together more closely than that on My Funny Valentine. The tune seems unusually responsive to the text.

Unlike most popular songs of the time, and most of Rogers’ songs, the chorus of My Funny Valentine begins in a minor key. It modulates to the relative major after eight measures. More characteristic, it has a simple melody supported by sophisticated harmonies. That feature of Rogers’ music may help explain why jazz performers loved his songs so much.

The normal love ballad celebrates all the beloved one’s wonderful characteristics.  From what Susie sings, surely Valentine has none, but she loves him anyway, just the way he is.

The pensive mood of the song is unlike any other song in the play, and not at all what a teenager would be expected to sing.

Hart often made autobiographical references in his lyrics. At only 4’10”, he persuaded himself than no woman would want him. As one of Broadway’s most successful men, he probably would have found a satisfying relationship without such a negative self-concept holding him back. In the case of My Funny Valentine, he seems to be crying out that he deserved love even though he was not handsome or charming. Susie thought of Valentine the way Hart wished some woman would think of him.

Rogers noted that, early in his career, Hart’s witty lyrics lacked warmth. He became concerned with emotion only later. Rogers wrote, “I can think of no lyric more touched with tenderness than Funny Valentine.”

In the seldom-heard verse, Hart indulged in language more characteristic of the 17^th century—up until the very last line. The archaic formality contrasts with mid-20^th-century colloquialism of the chorus.

Behold the way our fine-feathered friend
His virtue doth parade
Thou knowest not, my dim-witted friend
The picture thou hast made
Thy vacant brow and thy tousled hair
Conceal thy good intent
Thou noble, upright, truthful, sincere
And slightly dopey gent
You’re…

My Funny Valentine…

Ella Fitzgerald recorded the verse, mostly because hardly anyone else did, and it would set her rendition apart.

Sources:

My Funny Valentine / Café Songbook
My Funny Valentine: Sinatra Song of the Century / Mark Steyn, Steyn’s Song of the Week Extra. February 13, 2015
A story of “My Funny Valentine” / Jerry Jazz Musician. February 14, 2016 [Link no longer works.]