The Way You Look Tonight
Soul Music
BBC
4.7 • 831 Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2016
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
'The Way You Look Tonight' was written by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields for the 1936 film 'Swing Time'.
Sung by Fred Astaire to Ginger Rogers while she was washing her hair, the song won an Oscar. It has been recorded by Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday.
Sarah Woodward, daughter of actor Edward, recalls how aged seven, she watched him sing it on The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show with his 'angelic' voice.
Theatre director Michael Bawtree remembers the song being his father's favourite, and being distraught when he broke the gramophone record as a five-year-old.
And Glaswegian singer, Eddie Toal describes making an album of jazz songs, including 'The Way You Look Tonight' to remember his late wife, Irene.
Series about pieces of music that make a powerful emotional impact.
Producer: Sara Conkey
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2016.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I was born in 1937 and my parents had a wind-up gramophone and a number of old 78 records, you know, which they just loved. |
| 0:09.6 | And they used to push the carpet aside of an evening and dance together, sometimes by themselves, sometimes with friends. |
| 0:17.2 | And, of course, the dances were all waltzes or slow fox trots or quick steps. |
| 0:22.3 | The one they really loved, I think, was the way you look tonight. |
| 0:55.3 | The world. My sister was three years older than I was. |
| 0:58.7 | I must have been about five, and she was maybe eight. |
| 1:03.4 | Anyway, we were playing one afternoon with the records and the wind-up gramophone, |
| 1:08.9 | and we dropped one of the records and cracked it in half. |
| 1:12.0 | Gosh, knows, it turned out to be the way you look tonight. |
| 1:15.3 | The very one of all that we knew was Dad's favorite. |
| 1:21.3 | So we ran to my mother and said, we broke Daddy's favorite record. |
| 1:24.3 | And she said, all right, don't be so upset. |
| 1:25.0 | Don't cry. |
| 1:25.4 | Don't cry. |
| 1:26.8 | Oh, we were inconsolable. |
| 1:27.9 | He'll be so upset. He'll be so angry't cry. Oh, we were inconsolable. He'll be so upset. |
| 1:30.7 | He'll be so angry and we're so unhappy about it. |
| 1:34.0 | And eventually she said, well, look, I'll tell you what I do. |
| 1:36.1 | I'll tell him that I did it. |
| 1:43.1 | And at the very same moment, simultaneously, my sister said, but you can't. |
| 1:44.1 | It's a lie. And I said, will you can't, it's a lie. |
| 1:45.8 | And I said, will you really? |
... |
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