Someone to Watch Over Me

Someone to Watch Over Me, a century old song, written by George and Ira Gershwin in 1926 for the musical Oh, Kay!    It premiered on November 8, 1926, at the Imperial Theatre on Broadway, starring Gertrude Lawrence and Victor Moore, and ran for 256 performances and its lead song subsequently became one of the major standards of the Great American Songbook with more than 1,800 recorded versions. many by the industry's most notable artists are on this page.

Initially the show Philadelphia previews ran more than three hours, and so the producers cut the prologue, thus losing the first 4 songs, and also in Act II another song all of which, which became obsolete in the reshuffling and also as a result the title character does not appear until 40 minutes into the show.

Someone to Watch Over Me's popularity and the fact that it's been around for a century prompted many artists to record it more than once. Frank Sinatra recorded it in 1946, 1954 & 1960, and Ella Fitzgerald twice (1950 & 1959). Art Tatum, jazz pianist of renown recorded it multiple times. Lastly, the song even appeared prominently in the 1995 movie Mr. Holland's Opus, starring Richard Dreyfuss as high-school music teacher. It was sung by Jean Louisa Kelly.

We have included in our sampling many of the recordings of significance over the century. However you should know there are two versions. Many songs from the 1920's–40's weren't originally written as stand-alone records. They've followed the Broadway score, thus some versions often had two parts - a Verse and a Refrain (marked with an *). The verse being almost conversational has been dropped in many, especially later versions.

Once Broadway songs became popular standards, record singers frequently discarded the introductory verse. The refrain made perfect sense by itself, was more immediately recognizable, and fit more comfortably onto records and radio programs. Contemporary accounts of the song specifically note that this was common with Broadway songs of the period and that introductory verses were increasingly omitted over time.