Libby Holman - I May Be Wrong (1929)

I may be wrong, but I think you're wonderful
I may be wrong, but I think you're swell
I like your style, say I think it's marvelous
I'm always wrong so how can I tell?

Deuces to me are all aces
Life is to me just a bore
Faces are all open spaces
You might be John Barrymore

You came along, say I think you're wonderful
I think you're grand, but I may be wrong

I may be wrong but I think you're wonderful
I may be wrong but I think you're swell

I like your style, say, I think you're marvelous
But I can't see, so how can I tell?

All of my gowns are unsightly, and each one of my hats is a crime
If, dear, in you I've picked rightly, it's the very first time in my life

You came along, say, I think you're wonderful
I think you're grand but I may be wrong

I may be wrong but I think you're swell
But I can't see, so how can I tell?

Music is by Henry Sullivan.

Lyrics are by Harry Ruskin.

Libby Holman helped popularize songs that that became standards, such as "Body and Soul."

This singer was born Elizabeth Lloyd Holzman at home in Cincinnati, Ohio, on May 23, 1904, to middle-class parents of German Jewish descent.

Libby was not raised in the Jewish faith. Her parents--Alfred Holzman (a lawyer/stockbroker) and Rachel (Workum) Holzman, a schoolteacher--had converted to the Christian Science church.

In 1923, after completing a major in French in three years, Libby Holman was the youngest woman to graduate from the University of Cincinnati.

At nineteen, she moved to New York with with a goal of making it on Broadway.

In 1925, she landed her first significant role in the play The Sapphire Ring and soon after joined the road company of The Greenwich Village Follies. Her big break came in Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s musical revue, The Garrick Gaieties (1925), which ran over 211 performances.

Her nearsightedness provided an unexpectedly alluring stage persona, while her palate, an eighth of an inch askew, helped produce her throaty sound.

Holman, a celebrity, landed roles in Merry-Go-Round (1927), Rainbow (1928), and Gambols (1929).

In 1929, she sang “Moanin’ Low” in Clifton Webb’s The Little Show.

During this period, Clifton Webb introduced Holman to Louisa Carpenter, a millionaire member of the du Pont family. By the time Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz’s Three’s a Crowd opened at the Selwyn Theater on October 15, 1930, Carpenter and Holman had become inseparable lovers (her bisexuality became the talk of Broadway, only the first of many tabloid scandals she inspired in the thirties). Costarring with Fred Allen, Holman sang “Give Me Something to Remember You By” and “Body and Soul.”