{{s-bef|before = "[[It's Love-Love-Love]]"<br/>by [[Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians]] with vocal chorus by Skip Nelson and the Lombardo Trio}}
{{s-ttl|title = ''[[Billboard (magazine)|The Billboard]]'' [[National Best Selling Retail Records]] [[List of Billboard number-one singles|number-one single]]<br/>(Bing Crosby version)|years =May 6 – June 3, 1944 (five weeks)}}
{{s-aft|after = "[[I'll Get By (As Long as I Have You)]]"<br/>by [[Harry James and His Orchestra]] with vocal chorus by [[Dick Haymes]]}}
{{s-bef|before = "San Fernando Valley" by [[Bing Crosby]] with [[John Scott Trotter and His Orchestra]]<br/><br/>"San Fernando Valley" by Bing Crosby with John Scott Trotter and His Orchestra}}
{{s-ttl|title = ''The Billboard'' Most Played Juke Box Records number-one single<br/>(Bing Crosby version)|years = May 27, 1944 (one week)<br/>June 10, 1944 (one week)}}
{{s-aft|after = "San Fernando Valley" by Bing Crosby with John Scott Trotter and His Orchestra<br/><br/>"I'll Get By (As Long as I Have You)" by Harry James and His Orchestra with vocal chorus by Dick Haymes}}
{{s-end}}
{{Cole Porter}}
{{Cole Porter}}
{{Bing Crosby}}
{{Bing Crosby}}
[[Category:1944 songs]]
[[Category:1944 songs]]
[[Category:Songs written by Cole Porter]]
[[Category:Songs written by Cole Porter]]
Revision as of 22:02, 27 November 2018
"I Love You" is a song written by Cole Porter in 1944 for his stage musical Mexican Hayride. The New York Times reviewed the show saying, inter alia, "Of Mr. Porter's score, the best number bears the title almost startling in its forthrightness, "I Love You," and is the property of Mr. Evans"[1] (Wilbur Evans).
However the rather commonplace lyrics of the song and why they were perhaps sub-standard for the song-writer was due to a challenge given Porter. His friend Monty Woolley contended that Porter's talent lay in the off-beat and the esoteric, maintaining that he could never take a cliche title like "I Love You" and write lyrics that included the banal sentiment "It's spring again, and birds on the wing again" and be successful. Porter accepted the challenge with the result that the song eventually topped the hit parade. Porter remarked that the "superior melody overcame the ordinary lyric".[2]
In 1945 Ira B. Arnstein sued Cole Porter for plagiarizing his work and filed a suit in the Federal Court. He had for twenty years been suing various songwriters and was considered to
be a little eccentric. He claimed that Porter had stolen four songs ("I Love You", "Don't Fence Me In", "Begin the Beguine" and "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To"). A jury dismissed the charges and the judge, moreover, awarded Porter $2,500 in legal costs, a sum that, since Arnstein couldn’t pay it, kept him from any chance of prevailing in a federal court for the rest of his life.[3]
[Not to be confused with an earlier song called "I Love You" by Harlan Thompson (lyrics) and Harry Archer (music) written for the 1923 musical Little Jessie James.]
^Reynolds, Fred (1986). The Crosby Collection 1926-1977. Gateshead, UK: John Joyce & Son. pp. 62–63.
^Rosen, Gary A, (2012). Unfair to Genius: The Strange and Litigious Career of Ira B. Arnstein. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 218. ISBN0199733481.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
