There's No Business Like Show Business
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"There's No Business Like Show Business" is an Irving Berlin song, written for the musical Annie Get Your Gun and orchestrated by Ted Royal. The song, a slightly tongue-in-cheek salute to the glamor and excitement of a life in show business, is sung in the musical by members of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in an attempt to persuade Annie Oakley to join the Wild West Show. It is reprised three times in the musical.
The song is also featured in the 1954 movie of the same name, where it is notably sung by Ethel Merman as the main musical number. The movie, directed by Walter Lang, is essentially a catalog of various Berlin's pieces, in the same way that Singin' in the Rain—which starred Donald O'Connor as well—was a collection of Arthur Freed songs. There was also a disco version of the song made during the 1970s, with Merman reprising her singing role (see The Ethel Merman Disco Album). The song became one of Ethel Merman's standards and was often performed by her at concerts and on television.
Other singers to have recorded the song include Judy Garland, The Andrews Sisters (with Bing Crosby and Dick Haymes), Susannah McCorkle, and Bernadette Peters.
Tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins did a rendition of the tune on his 1956 Prestige album, Work Time.
[edit] In popular culture
- The Ethel Merman recording is featured in the film All That Jazz (1979).
- From 1976 to 2007 the rock band Genesis played the Ethel Merman recording at the end of gigs—it can be heard at the end of their 1977 live album Seconds Out.
- During the credits of "Noises Off (film)", Niki Haris sings a form of the song.
- In the 2000 musical film version of Love's Labour's Lost, Nathan Lane sings a form of the song.
- In Desperate Housewives,Felicity Huffman's character,Lynette Scavo sang a line from this song after telling her sister's boyfriend she'll sing Ethel Merman "at the top of her lungs" in an attempt to make him consider taking her sister back
[edit] References
- America's Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley, Philip Furia, Michael L. Lasser. Routledge, 2006, ISBN 978-0415972468, p. 206
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