As the delights of the fall season crowd around, memories of summer
slowly fade. I find it harder than ever to believe I really
saw, at a respected, nationally acclaimed theater (Connecticut’s
Goodspeed Opera House), Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas singing a
duet. Not just singing, but dancing, too. And not just any old
number, but one of the treasures of the
American songbook, “On the
Sunny Side of the Street”:
Grab your coat and get your hat
Leave your worries on the doorstep
Just direct your feet
To the Sunny Side of the Street
Can’t you hear that pitter-pat?
Oh, that happy tune is your step
Life can be so sweet
On the Sunny Side of the Street …
They’re big, fat, clean words that bounce off the notes and pass
into the language: I recall, a couple of years back, seeing a
cartoon of a glass case next to an elevator with a sign saying, “In
case of fire, grab your coat and get your hat, leave your worries on
the doorstep.” It’s not Gertrude Stein, of course. She was an
occasional lyricist—she wrote words to Virgil Thomson’s music for
Four Saints in Three Acts. But she’d never have bothered rhyming
across the quatrains like that: hat/pat, doorstep/your step … That’s the
unobtrusive precision of Dorothy Fields, a much better writer in my
view.
As to what Gertrude and Alice B. were