That's Entertainment! (song)

For the song by British new wave band The Jam, see That's Entertainment (song).

"That's Entertainment!" is a popular song with music written by Arthur Schwartz and lyrics by Howard Dietz.[1] The song was published in 1952 and was written especially for the 1953 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical film The Band Wagon. The song is performed in the film by Jack Buchanan supported by Fred Astaire, Nanette Fabray, and Oscar Levant. In 2004 the song finished at #45 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema.

Since the movie, the song has become an anthem for Hollywood and theater in general, being used as an opening number in many shows. Alongside "Hooray for Hollywood," "There's No Business Like Show Business" and "Another Op'nin', Another Show", it is considered one of entertainment's signature tunes. The song is perhaps most associated with Judy Garland, who recorded it for her 1960 LP That's Entertainment!. A year later a live version appeared on Garland's Grammy-winning double album Judy at Carnegie Hall.

MGM used the song title for its nostalgic series of films featuring clips from its golden musical age, as That's Entertainment!. The original 1974 release spawned two sequels in which the song was retained.

In That's Entertainment, Part II, some new lyrics were added to the song and performed by hosts Gene Kelly and Astaire. The film credited those lyrics to Dietz and Saul Chaplin, one of the film's producers, though Chaplin was known as a composer, not a lyricist.

In the 1980s the song was performed, again with new lyrics, by Larry Santos in a commercial for TV Guide magazine.

Renditions

References

  1. ↑ Furia, Philip & Lasser, Michael (2006). America's Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley. Routledge. p. 240.
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