On November 18, 1933, “Yesterdays” was introduced to a New Amsterdam Theater audience. The song was included in the score of Roberta, a Broadway musical that would enjoy a successful run of 295 performances. “Yesterdays” was an instant hit, appearing on the recording charts a week after the show opened. The recording by Leo Reisman and His Orchestra (Frank Luther, vocal) would climb all the way to third place.

Roberta, based on Alice Duer Miller’s novel, Gowns by Roberta, told the story of a college football player who inherits a dress shop in Paris. The plot was panned as overly romantic and just plain ridiculous; however, the songs purportedly saved what was to be Jerome Kern’s last successful Broadway show. Along with “Yesterdays” the score included such notable songs as “I’ll Be Hard to Handle,” “Let’s Begin,” and “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.” The Herald Tribune reported that there was a “sudden outburst of public whistling, humming, and crooning of its score.”

Hot on the heels of its Broadway success, Roberta found new life as a 1935 Hollywood musical. The film starred Irene Dunne, Randolph Scott, Fred Astaire, and Ginger Rogers and once again was well received on the strength of the Kern-Harbach score* as well as the Astaire-Rogers dance routines. The 1952 remake, Lovely to Look At, was not as well reviewed.

Another major strength of the original Broadway run was a stellar cast that included Tamara, Lyda Roberti, Sydney Greenstreet, George Murphy, Bob Hope and Fred MacMurray. Fay Templeton was given the honor of performing the lovely “Yesterdays.”

Jerome Kern was slow to embrace new styles, and there is considerable discussion about his 1930’s melodies clinging to the qualities of an operetta. Author-editor-publicist Eric Myers says, “Jerome Kern had planned Roberta as a semi-operetta along the lines of his previous hits, The Cat and the Fiddle and Music in the Air. What finally emerged was closer to traditional musical comedy, although the refulgent melodies of ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,’ ‘The Touch of Your Hand’ and ‘Yesterdays’ definitely have their roots in the florid ground of operetta.”

*According to Clive Hirschhorn’s book Hollywood Musicals the film Roberta retained four of the show’s original numbers, “Let’s Begin,” “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” “Yesterdays,” and “I’ll Be Hard to Handle,” the latter with new lyrics by Bernard Dougall. Three more were used as background music and two were commissioned from Kern and lyricist Dorothy Fields: “Lovely to Look At” and “I Won’t Dance” which was originally written by Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II for a London show called Three Sisters.