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“Who’s sorry now?”


Paul Howes has provided a musical diversion in the Ruby one-name study.  No, there is no recording of Paul singing but some well-known 1950s era songs had a Ruby involved!



A visit of a British friend led to my taking her to the city of Savannah, Georgia.  While there we happened upon the American Prohibition Museum dedicated to documenting the 18th Amendment to the US constitution.  On our way to the “speakeasy” at the end of the exhibition my eye was drawn to some anti-prohibition sheet music on the wall.  Featured in the middle was this image:
American Prohibition Museum - Harry Ruby Song
Apologies for the lack of focus – you can see that I was already in need of the sustenance at the end of our visit!  There was quite an industry devoted to anti-Prohibition songs at the time.  Here’s a better focused picture of an Irving Berlin composition with what for the 1920s was quite a raunchy title!

American Prohibition Museum - Irving Berlin Songsheet
A little internet research when I returned home revealed a fascinating story of a successful son of an immigrant family in the US making his name in vaudeville (music halls), theaters and movies before the Second World War.  Harry Ruby was, it turns out, a prolific songwriter who composed many well-known tunes, mostly in partnership with Bert Kalman.   They wrote the scores for at least three Marx Brothers films among many others. Groucho Marx was a long-term friend.

Two Ruby/Kalman songs in particular stand the test of time very well.  “Who’s sorry now?” and “I wanna be loved by you” were hits for Connie Francis and Marilyn Monroe in the 1950’s, thirty years after they were written.  Both are still remembered as classics even today.  So popular were Ruby and Kalman that a movie was made about them, starring Fred Astaire and Red Skelton, called “Three little words”.
Harry Ruby (l.) and Bert Kalmar (r.)

As I researched Harry’s background, I think I found why so little is known of his early years.  Turns out his birth name was Rubenstein and his parents had immigrated to the US just a few years before he was born.  Harry took the Ruby name sometime between the 1915 census of New York and filling in his WW1 draft card in 1917.  There is no obvious reason for the name change.  It sounds like it must have been for professional reasons, but Rubenstein is not a difficult name to pronounce.  His family was Jewish but there doesn’t seem to have been any discrimination in a business era that contained such notables as Irving Berlin, Sammy Cahn, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern and so on.  Perhaps, given the time, it was just not politic for someone with a German-sounding name to be trying to make their way in show-business.

To see what we have found out so far about Harry, click here: http://ruby.one-name.net/getperson.php?personID=I13957&tree=Ruby





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