Lydia the Tattooed Lady
Lydia the Tattooed Lady ("Lydia, the tattooed lady") is a novelty song written by Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen from the film The Marx Brothers in the Circus (1939), where it is performed by Groucho Marx .
action
The text is about a very fabulous lady named Lydia , or rather about her numerous tattoos , which she presents to the amazed audience for cash (apparently in a circus or vaudeville theater). The following motifs can be admired on her torso :
- The battle of Waterloo , the wreck of the Hesperus and a waving stars and stripes (all on Lydia's back)
- Cityscapes of Paris and Kankakee, Illinois
- George Washington crossing the Delaware
- Andrew Jackson , climbing a hill
- The Niagara Falls
- Alcatraz prison island (but only on days with a clear view)
- Buffalo Bill swinging a lasso
- the Amazon expedition by Captain Spaulding (a fictional character from the Marx Brothers film Animal Crackers (1930))
- Lady Godiva (not naked, but in pajamas)
- Grover Whalen, the exhibition director of the New York World's Fair in 1939 as the sculpture Trylon unveiled
- Treasure Island
- Vaslav Nijinsky , dancing the rumba
- Lydia's social security number
- a "classic Mendel Picasso "
- Ships on her hip
Lydia the Tattooed Lady is one of the most famous comic pieces of American songwriting today and is often referenced in popular culture. Virginia Weidler agreed to the song in the film The Night Before the Wedding as early as 1940 , Robin Williams sang it in 1991 in King of the Fishermen ; Noteworthy is also the performance of Kermit the frog in the Muppet Show in January 1976.
literature
- Harold Meyerson: Who Put the Rainbow in the Wizard of Oz? Yip Harburg, lyricist . University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1995, pp. 161ff.
- Margo De Mello : Inked: Tattoos and Body Art around the World. ABC-CLIO 2014, ISBN 1-610-6907-61 , p. 88.
Individual evidence
- ↑ bbc.com: BFI and Stornoway recreate Lydia the Tattooed Lady. Retrieved January 7, 2018