Lyrics by Harry Ruskin
Music by Henry Sullivan
Libby Holman helped popularize songs that became standards, such as "Body and Soul."
She has been called a "torch singer." In the lyrics of some songs, the female carries a torch (love) for a man who rejected her.
This singer was born Elizabeth Lloyd Holzman at home in Cincinnati, Ohio, on May 23, 1904, to middle-class parents of German Jewish descent.
Libby was not raised in the Jewish faith. Her parents--Alfred Holzman (a lawyer/stockbroker) and Rachel (Workum) Holzman, a schoolteacher--had converted to the Christian Science church.
In 1923, after completing a major in French in three years, Libby Holman was the youngest woman to graduate from the University of Cincinnati.
At nineteen, she moved to New York with with a goal of making it on Broadway.
In 1925, she landed her first significant role in the play The Sapphire Ring and soon after joined the road company of The Greenwich Village Follies. Her big break came in Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s musical revue, The Garrick Gaieties (1925), which ran over 211 performances.
Her nearsightedness provided an unexpectedly alluring stage persona, while her palate, an eighth of an inch askew, helped produce her throaty sound.
Holman, a celebrity, landed roles in Merry-Go-Round (1927), Rainbow (1928), and Gambols (1929).
In 1929, she sang “Moanin’ Low” in Clifton Webb’s The Little Show.
During this period, Clifton Webb introduced Holman to Louisa Carpenter, a millionaire member of the du Pont family. By the time Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz’s Three’s a Crowd opened at the Selwyn Theater on October 15, 1930, Carpenter and Holman had become inseparable lovers (her bisexuality became the talk of Broadway, only the first of many tabloid scandals she inspired in the thirties). Costarring with Fred Allen, Holman sang “Give Me Something to Remember You By” and “Body and Soul.”
Zachary Smith Reynolds, heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune, began, followed Holman’s career. An aviator, he flew from city to city courting her attentions until November 16, 1931, when, just days after his divorce from Anne Cannon was finalized, the two were married by a justice of the peace in Monroe, Michigan. The famously ill-fated marriage ended tragically at the Reynolds estate, “Reynolda,” near Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
On July 5, 1932, Reynolds was shot in his bedroom. He died the next morning in the hospital, a coroner declaring the death a suicide.
Two grand juries approved murder charges against Holman, who had been with Reynolds at the time of the shooting, and against Ab Walker, Reynolds’s best friend.
Holman went into hiding with Louisa Carpenter, and eventually the case was dropped through the influence of the Reynolds family.
Music by Henry Sullivan
Libby Holman helped popularize songs that became standards, such as "Body and Soul."
She has been called a "torch singer." In the lyrics of some songs, the female carries a torch (love) for a man who rejected her.
This singer was born Elizabeth Lloyd Holzman at home in Cincinnati, Ohio, on May 23, 1904, to middle-class parents of German Jewish descent.
Libby was not raised in the Jewish faith. Her parents--Alfred Holzman (a lawyer/stockbroker) and Rachel (Workum) Holzman, a schoolteacher--had converted to the Christian Science church.
In 1923, after completing a major in French in three years, Libby Holman was the youngest woman to graduate from the University of Cincinnati.
At nineteen, she moved to New York with with a goal of making it on Broadway.
In 1925, she landed her first significant role in the play The Sapphire Ring and soon after joined the road company of The Greenwich Village Follies. Her big break came in Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s musical revue, The Garrick Gaieties (1925), which ran over 211 performances.
Her nearsightedness provided an unexpectedly alluring stage persona, while her palate, an eighth of an inch askew, helped produce her throaty sound.
Holman, a celebrity, landed roles in Merry-Go-Round (1927), Rainbow (1928), and Gambols (1929).
In 1929, she sang “Moanin’ Low” in Clifton Webb’s The Little Show.
During this period, Clifton Webb introduced Holman to Louisa Carpenter, a millionaire member of the du Pont family. By the time Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz’s Three’s a Crowd opened at the Selwyn Theater on October 15, 1930, Carpenter and Holman had become inseparable lovers (her bisexuality became the talk of Broadway, only the first of many tabloid scandals she inspired in the thirties). Costarring with Fred Allen, Holman sang “Give Me Something to Remember You By” and “Body and Soul.”
Zachary Smith Reynolds, heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune, began, followed Holman’s career. An aviator, he flew from city to city courting her attentions until November 16, 1931, when, just days after his divorce from Anne Cannon was finalized, the two were married by a justice of the peace in Monroe, Michigan. The famously ill-fated marriage ended tragically at the Reynolds estate, “Reynolda,” near Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
On July 5, 1932, Reynolds was shot in his bedroom. He died the next morning in the hospital, a coroner declaring the death a suicide.
Two grand juries approved murder charges against Holman, who had been with Reynolds at the time of the shooting, and against Ab Walker, Reynolds’s best friend.
Holman went into hiding with Louisa Carpenter, and eventually the case was dropped through the influence of the Reynolds family.
Category
🎵
MúsicaTranscripción
00:30I was no baby in the wild, but he didn't mean it, I should have seen it, now it's too late.
00:46I thought I'd met the man of my dreams, now it seems this is how the story ends.
00:59He's gonna turn me down and say, can't we be friends?
01:06I thought for once it couldn't go wrong, not for long, this is how the story ends.
01:17He's gonna turn me down and say, can't we be friends?
01:23Never again, through with love, through with men, they play their game, without shame and who to blame.
01:43I thought I'd met the man of my dreams, now it seems this is how the story ends.
01:55He's gonna turn me down and say, can't we be friends?
02:02I thought I'd met the man of my dreams, now it seems this is how the story ends.
02:14He's gonna turn me down and say, can't we be friends?
02:23I acted like a kid out of school, what a fool I can be, the way this ends.
02:34I let him turn me down and say, can't you and I be friends?
02:42Why should I care if he's gone and given me the air?
02:49Why should I cry, keep a sigh and wonder why?
03:00Oh, I should have seen the signals to stop, what a flop, this is how the story ends.
03:12I let him turn me down and say, can't we be friends?