“They All Laughed” is a song composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, written for the 1937 film Shall We Dance where it was introduced by Ginger Rogers as part of a song and dance routine with Fred Astaire.
This song was written for Ginger Rogers in the 1937 musical film Shall We Dance. It’s the most obvious example of Ira Gershwin’s frequent habit of referencing inventors and discoverers when talking about falling in love. Supposedly George S. Kaufman heard an early rehearsal of this song and wondered whether it was, in fact, a love song before the brothers got to the lyric “They laughed at me wanting you,” at which point Kaufman threw up his hands and said, “Oh, well.”
The lyrics compare those who “laughed at me, wanting you” with those who laughed at some of history’s famous scientific and industrial pioneers, asking, “Who’s got the last laugh now?” Michael Feinstein, a singer and pianist who once worked as an archivist for Ira Gershwin, explained the inspiration behind the song in NPR Fresh Air interview: “There used to be a famous magazine and newspaper ad that showed a drawing of a man sitting at the piano, and it said above it: They all laughed when I sat down to play the piano. And it was an advertisement for a quickie course in how to learn to play the piano. And that phrase, they all laughed, was something that stuck in Ira’s head, and he later used that as the inspiration for a love song.”
People and advances mentioned are Christopher Columbus’s proof the Earth is round; Thomas Edison’s phonograph; Gugliemo Marconi’s wireless telegraphy; the Wright brothers’ first flight; the Rockefeller Centre; Eli Whitney’s cotton gin; Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat; Milton Hershey’s Hershey Bar chocolate; and Henry Ford’s “Tin Lizzy” Model T car.
Fred Astaire with Johnny Green and His Orchestra recorded the song on March 18, 1937. Brunswick Records released it as a single, which appeared on the U.S. record charts. Astaire recorded the song again in 1952 for his album The Astaire Story and again in 1975 for the album The Golden Age Of Fred Astaire. A version by Frank Sinatra appears on his triple album Trilogy: Past Present Future (1980), in the “Past” section. Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett covered the song for their jazz collaborative album, Cheek to Cheek.
