When I Would If I Could closed after one season, Secunda attempted to sell the publishing rights of the song, even taking a plane to California to promote it to popular entertainer Eddie Cantor who demurred saying: "I can't use it. It was a favorite among Jewish bandstands of the Second Avenue milieu. Nevertheless, the song became a well-known crowd-pleaser in Yiddish musical theater and at Jewish enclaves in the Catskills. The song itself featured only fleetingly in this original musical production and was performed as a lovers duet by Aaron Lebedeff and Lucy Levin. Despite a series of predictable attempts to thwart the marriage, they are, of course, wed in the end." In response to her concern about the endurance of his commitment to her, he sings Bay mir bistu sheyn to her at some point in the first act. "Jake, a shoe factory worker who is fired for union organizing activity is in love with the owner's daughter, Hene. ![]() The plot of Blum's operetta was reportedly trite and underwhelming: Together, Secunda and lyricist Jacobs created "Bei Mir Bistu Shein" for a Yiddish operetta called I Would If I Could, written in 1932 by Abraham Blum. When composing tunes for Yiddish theater as a young man, Secunda purportedly spurned a youthful George Gershwin as a musical collaborator in favor of Jacob Jacobs, an actor-director affiliated with the Parkway Theater. He immigrated to the United States as a boy in 1906. Sholom Secunda was a composer born in the Russian Empire in 1894. History Yiddish original įurther information on the original authors: Jacob Jacobs (theater) and Sholom Secunda Whitfield has further posited that the song's popularity and influence in pre-war America epitomizes how "a minority culture" can transform the popular arts of a large democratic nation. ![]() Levin, a scholar of Jewish music, has contended that "Bei Mir Bistu Shein" is "the world's best-known and longest-reigning Yiddish theater song of all time." Echoing these sentiments, writer Stephen J. Five years after its 1932 composition, English lyrics were written for the tune by Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin, and the English version of the song became a worldwide hit when recorded by The Andrews Sisters under a Germanized spelling of the title, " Bei mir bist du schön", in November 1937. The original Yiddish version of the song (in C minor) is a dialogue between two lovers. The score for the song transcribed the Yiddish title as " Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn". " Bei Mir Bistu Shein" ( Yiddish: בײַ מיר ביסטו שעהן, or Yiddish: בײַ מיר ביסטו שיין,, "To Me You're Beautiful") is a popular Yiddish song written by lyricist Jacob Jacobs and composer Sholom Secunda for a 1932 Yiddish language comedy musical, I Would If I Could (in Yiddish, Men Ken Lebn Nor Men Lost Nisht, "You could live, but they don't let you"), which closed after one season at the Parkway Theatre in Brooklyn, New York City.
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