Weekend at the Ritz

YouTube: the no-extra-charge jukebox. Wonder how long that's going to last. While it's low cost, though, we should use it for our own purposes, however eccentric. Such as posting a half-dozen embeds to illustrate the uses "Puttin' on the Ritz" has seen over the decades.

I was unfamiliar with the original lyrics until a few years ago when I acquired a CD including the version by Harry Richman, who sang it first in the movies, and had a hit record with it in 1930.

Speaking of him, I haven't verified the following from Richman's Wiki entry, but it's so amusing I'm copying it here. I suppose I could check eBay to see if there really is a trade in Harry Richman ping-pong balls, and if so, how much they cost: "Richman was also an amateur aviator of some accomplishment, being the co-pilot in 1936, with famed flyer Henry Tindall "Dick" Merrill, of the first round-trip trans-Atlantic flight in his own single-engine Vultee transport. Richman had filled much of the empty space of the aircraft with ping pong balls as a flotation aid in case they were forced down in the Atlantic, and after the successful flight he sold autographed ones until his death. They continue to turn up on eBay to this day."

Anyway, this is a clip of Richman in Puttin' on the Ritz:

Note that the original Berlin lyrics put the song in Harlem, on Lenox Avenue, rather than Park Avenue, and that fifteen dollars are involved, rather than "lots of dollars." Other differences include the following, again from Wiki, but I know the versions well enough to confirm them:

Original: Spangled gowns upon a bevy of high browns from down the levee, all misfits
Revised: Different types who wear a day coat, pants with stripes and cut away coat, perfect fits

Original: That's where each and ev'ry Lulu-Belle goes, ev'ry Thursday evening with her swell beaus
Revised: Dressed up like a million dollar trouper, trying hard to look like Gary Cooper

Original: Come with me and we'll attend the jubilee, and see them spend their last two bits
Revised: Come, let's mix where Rockefellers walk with sticks or umber-ellas in their mitts

Clark Gable got a hold of the song in Idiot's Delight in 1939, played for grins. The song is still about Harlem.

Later -- in 1946 -- Fred Astaire sings it in Blue Skies. The song has gone to Park Avenue by now, with revised lyrics by Berlin himself.

In 1974, Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle did the Young Frankenstein version:

If nothing else, the 1982 version showed the song's tremendous staying power. Taco's version charted that year. The next year, I remember hearing it on one of the audio channels of a trans-Atlantic flight and thinking, how odd. But the video is fairly effective.

Hugh Laurie made use of the song as well, in the days before he became House (1993):

At a half-dozen, that's hardly all the versions that have been done, but it's enough for weekend viewing.