I'm dumb again
And numb again,
A rich, ready, ripe little plum again-
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.
These lines were originally:
Dumb again, numb again,
Like Fanny Brice singing "Mon Homme" again,
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.
(Source: "Rogers & Hart - Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered - a Dual Biography" by Samuel Marx and Jan Clayton - Putnam 1976)
There is also a REPRISE:
Wise at last,
My eyes at last
Are cutting you down to your size at last-
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered no more.
Burned a lot,
But learned a lot,
And now you are broke, though you earned a lot-
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered no more.
Couldn't eat-
Was dyspeptic,
Life was so hard to bear;
Now my heart's antiseptic,
Since you moved out of there.
Romance -finis;
Your chance - finis;
Those ants that invaded my pants - finis-
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered no more.
(Source: "Thou Swell Thou Witty - The Life and Lyrics of Lorenz Hart" by Dorothy Hart, Harper & Row 1976)
[When I last made reference to this great book - on "another site" - the book's researcher, Michael Colby, posted a very nice comment reflecting on the effort involved in getting all the lyrics correct. Dorothy Hart thought so highly of his efforts that she not only thanked him in the "Acknowledgements" section, the page facing Richard Rodgers' dedication has the single line: "Again, for his research, I would like to thank Michael Colby".]
The Marx/Clayton book tells this tale about the Christmas night 1940 Opening on Broadway:
Unlike its reception in Philadelphia, "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" did arouse yells for encores.
"Suddenly, on opening night it happened," said Vivienne Segal. "They wanted more, more. I remembered a couplet Larry had written but thrown out because he didn't like it:
Dumb again, numb again,
Like Fanny Brice singing "Mon Homme" again,
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.
"I sang it. Our director, Mr. Abbott asked me afterward, 'How on earth did you ever remember it?' I told him I was so damn mad Larry didn't write any encores for me, I had to remember something. The couplet stayed in, and Larry wrote more of them, including;
Vexed again, perplexed again,
Thank God I can be oversexed again.
But in all the critical acclaim, there was one blue note, and as is often the case, it gave so much pain that the hurt couldn't be erased by others. Brooks Atkinson, critic of the New York Times, wrote, "These are scbrous lyrics to one of Rodgers' most haunting tunes, 'Bewitched.' Although it is expertly done, can you draw sweet water from a foul well?"
No one ever wrote a worse criticism of Larry's lyrics. Gene Kelly saw him actually weeping over it. But thinking back on the years afterward, he wondered if Larry hadn't read into it a critique of his personal life.
Twelve years later, the same Brooks Atkinson reviewed the revival of Pal Joey. "No one is likely to be impervious to the liviliness and versatility of the score and the easy perfection of the lyrics." But his well-eaten word appeared much too late for Larry to know.
der Brucer (who would know little about all this stuff if DR Woody didn't have me gathering all sorts of source material for a show he wanted to write on the life and works of Dorothy Fields).
