Pick Yourself Up

Written: 1936

Music by: Jerome Kern

Words by: Dorothy Fields

Written for: Swing Time
(movie, 1936)

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"Pick Yourself Up"

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The movie is the story of how John "Lucky" Garnett (Fred Astaire), a dancer and gambler, meets and falls in love with Penny Carroll (Ginger Rodgers) a dancing school teacher. Lucky is engaged to a wealthy society girl in his home town in upstate New York, but when he fails to arrive in time for his own wedding, he is informed by his fiance's father that he can't marry his daughter (Betty Furness) until he proves himself a responsible fellow by earning $25,000. Lucky and his sidekick, magician "Pop" Cardetti (Victor Moore), take off for New York City in hopes of finding the money but instead Lucky finds and falls for Penny. The remainder of the movie is a series of comic episodes as Lucky and Penny get together but quickly fall apart. Most of these episodes provide the opportunity for a song and/or dance--some of the greatest in the history of film.

The first of these takes place at the dancing school where Penny teaches. In order to get closer to her Lucky pretends to be a klutzy student but gets her fired instead. However, he manages to redeem Penny in the eyes of Mr. Gordon her Boss (Eric Blore) and himself in hers by demonstrating how much she has taught him. Penny resists saying, "No one could teach you to dance in a million years. Take my advice save your money." Nevertheless, Lucky insists on picking himself up, dusting himself off and trying once more. Suddenly Penny finds herself dancing with one of the greatest dancers of all time, which is enough to save her job, flutter her heart and thrill Mr. Gordon -- as well as us. Pop winds up fancying Mabel Anderson (Helen Broderick) the receptionist at the school and the four of them journey through the rest of the movie together having their share of misadventures; but finally the rule for comedy applies: all's well that ends well -- and, of course, it does.

The scenes described above with Fred Astaire, Ginger Rodgers,
Eric Blore, Victor Moore and Helen Broderick from Swing Time, 1936.
(Please complete or pause one
video before starting another.)

The Ten Movies Co-starring
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

1) Flying Down to Rio (1933); 2) The Gay Divorcee (1934); 3) Roberta (1935); 4) Top Hat (1935); 5) Follow the Fleet (1936); 6) Swing time (1936); 7) Shall We Dance (1937); (8) Carefree (1938); (9) The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939); 10) The Barkleys of Broadway (1949).

Click here to read the lyrics for "Pick Yourself Up"
as sung by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Swing Time.

The first "He" section is the verse. The second section, sung by "She," is the refrain. The next section, sung by "He" is an "interlude," and the final section is a repeat of the refrain sung by both of them.

The "interlude" is obviously more than a plea for patience by Lucky while she is teaching him to dance. It is a flattering way (he implies she has great endurance and courage) of getting her to spend lots of time with him: "I'll get some self-assurance / If your endurance is great. / I'll learn by easy stages / If you're courageous and wait." It is also a plea for some physical contact: "To feel the strength I want to, / I must hang on to your hand." (Note Fields' wonderful internal, feminine rhymes: "stages" with "courageous" and "want to" with "onto.") The interlude concludes with a suggestion, delivered with very Astaire-like charm, that his awkwardness may require them to remain together for a very long time: "Maybe by the time I'm fifty / I'll get up and do a nifty." As one can see, it works. Her smile slowly but irresistibly emerges in response to his words. (See videos above.)

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Barack Obama, in his inaugural address in January, 2009, paraphrases Dorothy Fields' lyric, when he states, "Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America." Peggy Noonan writing in The Wall Street Journal about Obama's use of Fields' words contends you would have to be rickety and doddering to recognize the connection between the speech and the song: "For those with enough years to recognize it, that [Obama's paraphrase] was an echo of a famous World War II-era song by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields." Noonan is a bit off on two counts. It's not a World War II era song; it's Depression era--a time when starting all over made complete sense--and you don't have to have "enough years" to have been around during the Depression to know it. The early twenty-first century has provided plenty of opportunity for picking oneself up and starting all over again. Furthermore the song has been recorded many times since by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Mel Tormé, Ann Hampton Callaway, Mark Murphy, Dianne Reeves, and Diana Krall. Surely there are a few of us who know the song from the likes of them, don't even use walkers, and even have it on our iPods or stream it on Rhapsody or Spotify.

Finally, Fields and Obama were on the same page more than he probably knew, because later in the lyric Fields encourages the supposedly inept dancer Lucky Garnett (Fred Astaire), who keeps falling as he dances, to mind his history: "Remember the famous men / Who had to fall to rise again." The advice might apply equally well to Obama given the ups and downs of his presidency.

The lyrics for "Pick Yourself Up" can be found in:

Reading Lyrics, Edited and with an Introduction by Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball, New York: Pantheon Books, 2000.	Deborah Grace Winer, On the Sunny Side of the Street: The Life and Lyrics of Dorothy Fields, (foreword by Betty Comden) New York: Schirmer Books, 1997
Robert Kimball, Ed. The Complete Lyrics Of Ira Gershwin, New York: Alfred A. Knoph, 1993; reprinted as paperback by Da Capo Press, 1998.

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