Bill

Written:
1918/1927
(see below)

Music by: Jerome Kern

Words by: P. G. Wodehouse
and Oscar Hammerstein II

Written for:
Oh, Lady! Lady! (show, 1918 -- cut from show before Broadway opening);
Finally used in Show Boat (show, 1927)

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"Bill"

Critics Corner || Lyrics Lounge

Although "Bill" has become the most famous song of those written by Kern and Hammerstein for Oh, Lady! Lady!, a well received show that ran for 219 performances in 1918, it was cut from the production somewhere during the out-of-town preliminaries to the Broadway opening only to resurface some ten years later to great acclaim in Show Boat. Not only that, before the song got to Show Boat, it appeared in another never-to-reach-Broadway production called Zip Goes a Million (1920) with an entirely different lyric by B. G. De Sylva, and yet again Kern tried but didn't manage to find a place for it in his ultimately successful show Sally, also in 1920.

According to Amy Asch, the editor of The Complete Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II, the lyric for "Bill" as it was intended for Oh, Lady! Lady! is by Wodehouse with "adjustments to the beginning of each refrain" by Hammerstein. How significant these changes were is obscured both by the song's erratic evolution and by Hammerstein's inherent modesty and sense of fairness. In a program note for the song's appearance in the 1946 revival of Show Boat, Hammerstein wrote,

I am particularly anxious to point out that the lyric for the song 'Bill' was written by P. G. Wodehouse. Although he had always been given credit in the program, it has frequently been assumed that since I wrote all the other lyrics for Show Boat, I also wrote this one, and I have had praise for it which belongs to another man (p. 112).

(This section is currently in preparation.)

Click here to read the lyrics for "Bill" as sung by Helen Morgan.

The complete, authoritative lyrics for "Bill" can be found in:

The Complete Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II, Amy Asch (Ed.), New York: Alfred A. Knoph/Borzoi Books, 2008.

Click here to read Cafe Songbook lyrics policy.

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