Fred Astaire - Just The Way You Look Tonight (Columbia 1973)

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"The Way You Look To-night" is a song from the film Swing Time that was performed by Fred Astaire and composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics written by Dorothy Fields. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936. Fields remarked, "The first time Jerry played that melody for me I went out and started to cry. The release absolutely killed me. I couldn't stop, it was so beautiful."

In the movie, Astaire sang "The Way You Look To-night" to Ginger Rogers while she was washing her hair in an adjacent room. Astaire's recording was a top seller in 1936. Other versions that year were by Guy Lombardo and Teddy Wilson with Billie Holiday.

The song was sung by Fred Astaire in the 1936 film Swing Time in the key of D major, but it is typically performed in E-flat major with a modulation to G-flat major.

It was first copyrighted on March 17, 1936 as "Way (The) you look to-night; song from I won't dance", and was unpublished ("I Won't Dance" was a song from the 1935 film Roberta by Kern and Fields). The next copyright on July 24, 1936 was from Swing Time and was published. Both were renewed in 1963.

Contemporary recordings
Fred Astaire recorded "The Way You Look To-night" in Los Angeles on July 26, 1936. Bing Crosby and his wife Dixie Lee recorded the song as a duet on August 19th.

To take advantage of the song's success, pianist Teddy Wilson brought Billie Holiday into a studio 10 weeks after the film Swing Time was released. Holiday was 21 when she recorded "The Way You Look Tonight" with a small group led by Wilson in October 1936.

A number of British dance bands also made contemporary cover recordings of the song: Ambrose (with vocals by Sam Browne), Roy Fox (with vocals by Denny Dennis), Tommy Kinsman, Harry Roy, Carroll Gibbons and the Savoy Hotel Orpheans (vocal by George Melachrino) and Jay Wilbur (with vocals by Sam Costa).

Fred Astaire (born Frederick Austerlitz] May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987) was an American dancer, actor, singer, musician, choreographer, and presenter, whose career in stage, film, and television spanned 76 years. He is widely regarded as the "greatest popular-music dancer of all time" He received an Honorary Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Grammy Award.

As a dancer, he was known for his uncanny sense of rhythm, creativity, effortless presentation, and tireless perfectionism, which was sometimes a burden to co-workers. His dancing showed elegance, grace, originality, and precision. He drew influences from many sources, including tap, classical dance, and the elevated style of Vernon and Irene Castle. His trademark style greatly influenced the American Smooth style of ballroom dance. He called his eclectic approach "outlaw style", a following an unpredictable and instinctive muse. His motion was economical, yet endlessly nuanced.

Astaire's most memorable dancing partnership was with Ginger Rogers, with whom he co-starred in 10 Hollywood musicals during the classic age of Hollywood cinema, including Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936), and Shall We Dance (1937). Astaire's fame grew in films like Holiday Inn (1942), Easter Parade (1948), The Band Wagon (1953), Funny Face (1957), and Silk Stockings (1957). For his performance in John Guillermin's disaster film, The Towering Inferno (1974), Astaire received his only competitive Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

Astaire received several honors including an Academy Honorary Award in 1950, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1960, the Film Society of Lincoln Center tribute in 1973, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1978, and AFI Life Achievement Award in 1980. He was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1972, and the Television Hall of Fame in 1989. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Astaire the fifth-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood cinema in 100 Years... 100 Stars.

Some day, when I'm awfully low
When the world is cold
I will feel a glow just thinking of you
And the way you look tonight

Oh but you're lovely with your smile so warm
And your cheeks so soft
There is nothing for me but to love you
Just the way you look tonight

With each word your tenderness grows
Tearing my fear apart
And that little laugh that wrinkles your nose
Just touches my foolish heart

Lovely never, never change
Keep that breathless charm
Oh won't you please arrange it?
'Cause I love you just the way you look tonight
Just the way you look tonight