Music: The Last Time I Saw Paris

Tin Pan Alley always keeps only a jump behind the international situation. The preoccupation of songwriters with U. S. patriotism put three flag-waving songs on Variety’s best-selling list.* The assault on England has boosted A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square to No. 3 on the list. But the fall of France has inspired the best tune: The Last Time I Saw Paris, by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. Not yet a bestseller, this song was well on its way last week. Kate Smith had had exclusive radio rights to it for six weeks. There were half a dozen records of it, of which silky-voiced Hildegarde’s (Decca) best captured its nostalgia for the boulevards :

The last time I saw Paris, Her trees were dressed for spring, And lovers walked beneath those trees, And birds found songs to sing. . . . The last time I saw Paris, Her heart was warm and gay. No matter how they change her I’ll remember her that way.†

For years, Lyricist Hammerstein has written show songs with Composer Kern (Show Boat, Sunny, Music in the Air). The Last Time I Saw Paris, said he last week, is the only song he ever wrote that was not written to order. It is also the first Kern-Hammerstein piece whose words were written before the music. It is a hit, said Mr. Hammerstein, because “everyone feels that way about Paris, even the people who’ve never been there.”

*God Bless America; Shout, I Am an American; He’s My Uncle. †Copyright 1940 by Chappell & Co. Inc., New York City.