Roberta

• Original Broadway Production (1933)
  New York, NY
• Film Version (1935)
• Film Version (1952)
• Television Production (1969)
• New Amsterdam Concert (1984)
  New York, NY
• Musicals Tonight! Concert (2008)
  New York, NY

Click on the title for info on the song.

Original score

• Let's Begin
• Alpha, Beta, Pi
  • aka Madrigal [no note]
• You're Devastating
• Yesterdays
• Something's Got to Happen
  • aka Something Had to Happen [no note]
• Prose Recital
• The Touch of Your Hand
• Pas de Seul
• The Showing at Roberta's
  • aka Fashion Show [no note]
• I'll Be Hard to Handle
• Hot Spot
• Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
• Dance Finaletto
• Sewing Department Dance
• Dressing Stephanie
• Clementina
• Entrance of Clementina Scharwenka
• Entrance of Stephanie

Cut prior to opening

• Don't Ask Me Not to Sing
• An Armful of Trouble
• You Inspire a Mad Desire

Added to 1935 film version

• I Won't Dance
• Lovely to Look At

Added to 1976 revival

• Russian Folk Song
• Indiana
• Lafayette
• Most Exciting Night, The
• Tonight Is Opening Night
• Pick Yourself Up

Recordings listed here were done in the studio specifically to release as recordings. They do not represent cast recordings of a particular production.

• Studio Cast (1944)
  

  • Alfred Drake (i)
  • Kitty Carlisle
  • Paula Laurence
  • Kathryn Meisle
• Studio Cast (1952)
  

  • Joan Roberts (i)
  • Jack Cassidy
  • Kaye Ballard
  • Portia Nelson
  • Stephen Douglass
• Studio Cast (1952)
  

  • Gordon MacRae
  • Lucille Norman
  • Anne Triola

Based on Alice Duer Miller's novel Gowns by Roberta

SCORE NOTES

• "Prose Recital" arises from the bandleader giving Roberta the idea to use music and commentary for the fashion show. Recorded versions use this portion as part of the fashion show.
• "The Showing at Roberta's", beginning with the 1935 film version, was replaced by "Lovely to Look At". Most revivals also use "Lovely to Look At" instead of the music for "The Showing at Roberta's".
• The music for "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" was first written as a tap dance bit for a scene change in Show Boat (1927). Then it was used as a march for a theme song of a 1932 radio series of made-for-radio musicals which Jerome Kern was to write. The show, however, never got on the air.
• "Clementina" is listed in some sources as a cut song. It was listed, however, in the original program as:
  • Scene Music Singer...............................George Djimos
• Originally to have been sung by Lyda Roberti (who couldn't handle the pace of this almost patter-song), it was replaced by a reprise of "I'll Be Hard to Handle". In the Town Hall concert revival it was performed as listed above and was not marked as one of the cut songs.
• We have been unable to determine if the music for "The Most Exciting Night" was used previously in a show or if it was written as an independent song. Kern died in 1945 so it could not have been written explicitly for the 1952 film. We believe it is most probable that it uses Kern music from something different with lyrics written for the film.

• Gowns by Roberta (pre-Broadway title)
• Lovely to Look At (film version title)