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[0:00] Paul Lazarus: Hi, this is Paul Lazarus. In the 1980s, I produced and hosted a radio series called Anything Goes, a celebration of the American musical theater. Now the Broadway Podcast Network is bringing back these shows. This is the first of a three-part program, paying tribute to composer Harry Ruby. Ruby is known for his collaborations with Burt Kalmer and Ted Snyder. He wrote countless hit songs like "Nevertheless," "I'm In Love With You," "Who's Sorry Now," and "Three Little Words." Perhaps he is best remembered for the zany songs he wrote for Groucho Marx and his brothers. This program was originally broadcast in 1981.

[0:45] Paul Lazarus: Good afternoon, and welcome to Anything Goes. This is Paul Lazarus. Today, a tribute to composer lyricist Harry Ruby. I've just finished directing a review entitled Harry Ruby Songs My Mother Never Sang, so I have many rare Ruby recordings to play for you, as well as Ruby standards from the 20s and 30s. Ruby is enjoying a virtual renaissance in New York these days. Along with Songs My Mother Never Sang, his 1927 hit, The Five O'Clock Girl, is being revived on Broadway by the Goodspeed Opera House. The song in the background, "Thinking of You," is from that show, one of Harry Ruby's most beautiful compositions.

[2:15] Paul Lazarus: No other one ever since I've begun to think of you.

[3:27] Paul Lazarus: Louis James, the vocalist, Nat Shilkret, conducting the Victor Orchestra, in a rendition of Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar's "Thinking of You." I'll be featuring a ballad version of "Thinking of You" later on in the program. You're listening to Anything Goes, with a tribute to composer and lyricist Harry Ruby. Ruby is perhaps best known for the words and music he provided for the Marx Brothers, including the film scores to Animal Crackers, Duck Soup, and Horse Feathers. He also wrote the screenplay for the latter two, with his lifelong partner, Bert Kalmar. Ruby collaborated with many other people, and in fact, wrote many songs, words, and music by himself, which tend to be more on the zany side.

We'll be featuring several of those, too, including some original cast recordings from the show that I directed, Harry Ruby's Songs My Mother Never Sang, which were made exclusively for this program, and I think you'll enjoy them. So stick with us. We'll be celebrating the life and the music and the words of Harry Ruby. These first two songs, I should say, are taken from the MGM movie soundtrack to a film entitled Three Little Words, which is part of that Ruby renaissance, because public television has aired this film in the last half a year over three times. Just amazing. It's the film biography of Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar. The two songs are "My Sunny Tennessee" and "So Long, Oolong," early, early hits for Kalmar and Ruby.

[5:27] ♪ Musical number: "My Sunny Tennessee" — performed by Unknown performer ♪

[6:35] ♪ Musical number: "So Long, Oolong" — performed by Unknown performer ♪

[7:33] Paul Lazarus: To Composer Harry Ruby. He was born Harry Rubinstein on January 27, 1895, on the Lower East Side of New York. And perhaps the two main aspects of his life that have been most celebrated in print are he was considered the world's most outstanding second baseman outside of baseball. He had an affinity for baseball like you would not believe, and that fact was celebrated in the movie of Three Little Words. But he used to go to spring training with the professional teams, and his biggest fetish in life was, or secret desire in life, was to play second base on the Yankees, or one of the great teams. And he often would say that he had wished he'd written, of all songs, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," which was often attributed to Ruby, but he did not write it.

Groucho Marx, one of Ruby's closest friends, always claimed that if Ruby's father and Joe DiMaggio had been in a burning building, and only one of them could have been saved, Ruby would have saved Joe DiMaggio. After all, agreed Ruby, my father didn't hit 300. These sort of stories were always going around about Ruby. And the other part of Ruby was that he was a terrific pianist and composer, and at a very, very early age, he got a start with music publisher Gus Edwards in Tin Pan Alley, and started plugging songs with George Gershwin and playing piano for Irving Berlin. He even at one point accompanied Walter Winchell, who was a song plugger at the time himself, singing in Woolworth's Five and Ten Cents stores.

Anyway, his first real score, apart from just interpolating songs into scores, was for Helen of Troy, New York, which also was in collaboration with Kauffman and Connolly. And it's said to be the only Broadway show to ever have its out-of-town tryout in Fairmont, West Virginia. There are not many recordings of the early Ruby work, which was primarily in the 20s and 30s, well, the 20s for theater and the 30s for film, so I really had to dig to come up with some of these things. But a song that does survive, because it ended up in Harry Ruby's Songs My Mother Never Sang, was a song written in 1920 called "Timbuktu" and subtitled The Buck Song, and Groucho Marx used to sing it, and he did it during his famous 1970 concert tour. And this is from the cast of Harry Ruby's Songs My Mother Never Sang, and Dira Stephanie Ann Christofferson and the orchestra performing Harry Ruby's "Timbuktu."

[10:39] ♪ Musical number: "Timbuktu" — performed by Dira Stephanie Ann Christofferson ♪

[12:33] Paul Lazarus: In dearest Stephanie Ann Christofferson, from the cast of Harry Ruby's Songs My Mother Never Sang, a cabaret show that recently ran at the production company, which yours truly directed, and the orchestrations on that song and musical direction were by Michael Roth, and I want to thank all of the members of the orchestra who took part in that show and gracefully consented to record these songs for us, which included Michael Roth at the piano, violin by Marshall Coyd, bassoon, flute, saxophones by Michael Ellert, clarinets and saxophones performed by James McElwain, and on the trombone, Don Mickelson. And we'll be hearing more songs from that show a little later in the program. And that was, of course, "Timbuktu," or the Buck Song, an early Harry Ruby composition with Burt Calmar.

And I wanted to go to a show that Calmar and Ruby wrote songs for in 1926 called The Ramblers, and a song that was pretty much a show that is only remembered for one number, and we're fortunate to have a recording from that Three Little Words picture featuring Gail Robbins, and the song is "All Alone Monday."

[13:55] ♪ Musical number: "All Alone Monday" — performed by Gail Robbins ♪

[14:42] ♪ Musical number: "All Alone Monday" — performed by Gail Robbins ♪

[16:12] Paul Lazarus: You're listening to a tribute to legendary composer Harry Ruby. I'm your host Paul Lazarus. Today, a little bit of a look backwards, or forwards for that matter, at Harry Ruby, whose recent Broadway revival was of his 1927 show The Five O'Clock Girl, perhaps Kalmar and Ruby's biggest hit. Kalmar and Ruby met in 1917 when Ruby got a job with Kalmar, who was already a successful music publisher and vaudevillian. Kalmar, who at the time was spending a lot of his free time writing lyrics, began a collaboration that really flourished until Kalmar passed away in 1947. This is a quote, a typical quote from Harry Ruby: "Lest I give the impression that I think a thing is better just because it is new, I hasten to admit that I consider Beethoven's Ninth Symphony a far superior work than is 'You or Is You Ain't My Baby.'

But I have yet to hear someone whistle the Beethoven Ninth while strolling along the street." Ruby was truly an original, and it's easy to see that from the kind of things that he used to say and the kind of lines that he put into the mouths of the Marx Brothers. This is another quote from Ruby, who really did not exactly have the most successful formal education, being kicked out of several schools and enjoying himself much more playing sandlot baseball: "No say to Ipsen is the only Latin I know, with the exception of ipso facto, terra firma, and Yogi Berra." More from Ruby a little later. Anyway, The Five O'Clock Girl really was Harry Ruby's and Burt Kalmar's biggest hit, and it was simply that it came out in a year that was surrounded by very, very successful shows, including, okay, the Gershwin show, The Desert Song, the Romberg score.

And 1927 was such a rich year in the history of musical theatre that I think The Five O'Clock Girl paled a bit. And even though it did not have a very successful run on Broadway recently when it was revived by the Goodspeed Opera House, it still had plenty of riches in its score. And here are two of them: "Up in the Clouds" and followed by "Thinking of You."

[19:39] ♪ Musical number: "Up in the Clouds" — performed by Franklin Bauer and the orchestra ♪

[23:36] ♪ Musical number: "Thinking of You" — performed by Anita Ellis ♪

[24:05] Paul Lazarus: Perhaps Ruby's greatest ballad. Every composer really should have a day like that. I want to flip back to the more zany side of Harry Ruby for a second. Harry Ruby and his partner Burt Kalmar published, in I believe it was 1937, a book entitled The Kalmar Ruby Songbook, which featured just perhaps the best word for it was a Time magazine writer's word, "loony leader." And these crazy songs ended up in a show that I directed recently called Harry Ruby Songs My Mother Never Sang and were brought to my attention by composer Michael Roth, who had discovered them on an album by Zero Mostel made for Vanguard, which is now sadly out of print. And the record was called Harry Ruby Songs My Mother Never Sang, which was based on Harry Ruby's own collection of songs that he wrote totally by himself called Songs My Mother Never Sang, and that was published in 1943.

Both of these songbooks are rather obscure and out of print now, but maybe we'll get them republished so you can get a chance to look at the music. This next song was a song by Kalmar and Ruby for The Kalmar Ruby Songbook, and this is Zero Mostel's version of "A Tulip Told a Tale."

[25:17] ♪ Musical number: "A Tulip Told a Tale" — performed by Zero Mostel ♪

[28:24] Paul Lazarus: You've been listening to episode one of a three-part tribute to gifted composer Harry Ruby. Anything Goes: Backstage with Broadway's Best is produced and hosted by Paul Lazarus. For more information, visit anythinggoespl.com. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and follow us. Thanks for listening.