Composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Lorenz Hart wrote two songs with the same title. The first “Spring Is Here” was the title of a 1929 Broadway show (filmed the following year), and the song was an upbeat tune, soon forgotten, and not the ballad that became a jazz standard. However, the show did produce the hit “With a Song in My Heart.”

The songwriters’ second “Spring Is Here,” and the one that is performed by jazz artists, appeared in the 1938 Broadway musical I Married an Angel. But the history of the show goes back to 1933 when Rodgers and Hart collaborated with writer Moss Hart on a film version of I Married an Angel to star Jeanette MacDonald. However, MGM shelved the project pronouncing the content to risque. Five years later MGM released those film rights to the songwriters provided the studio retain the option of filming the stage production.

Rodgers and Hart decided not to use the scenario created by Moss Hart for the film but to return to the 1932 play Angyalt Vettem Felesegul (I Married an Angel) by Hungarian writer Janos Vaszary which had been a hit in Budapest. It told the story of a Count, a banker/playboy in Budapest, who marries an angel. According to Rodgers, “The theme of the play was that it’s possible for someone to be too good. Our angel nearly ruins her husband’s life by her truthful but undiplomatic remarks. It is only when, under the expert tutelage of Vivienne Segal [who plays the sister of the Count], she becomes devilish instead of angelic that the marriage is saved.”

The show, directed by Joshua Logan, starred Dennis King as the count, Segal as his sister the countess, and ballerina Vera Zorina as the angel. King and Segal introduced “Spring Is Here” in the show which ran for 338 performances. Two ballet numbers, choreographed by the great George Balanchine, were well integrated into the plot as were the dances in the songwriters’ previous show, On Your Toes.

According to David Ewen in his book The Complete Book of American Musical Theater critic Brooks Atkinson called the show “one of the best musical comedies of many seasons, an imaginative improvisation with a fully orchestrated score and an extraordinarily beautiful production. Musical comedy has met its masters.”

“Spring Is Here” charted twice in 1938: Leo Reisman and His Orchestra with vocalist Felix Knight took it to number 14, and vocalist Buddy Clark’s version reached number 19. The title song made Your Hit Parade during the Broadway run.

Finally a film version of I Married an Angel was made in 1942, starring Jeanette MacDonald (predictably) and Nelson Eddy who sang “Spring Is Here.” But censorship of the suggestive content which concerned an angel who loses not only her wings but her virginity took most of the life out of the story. The movie, the last for MacDonald and Eddy, was a flop. Even the score was changed to include additional songs, not written by Rodgers and Hart, to please fans of the singing duo.

Alec Wilder in his book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 describes “Spring Is Here” as a “shattering ballad” and continues to say, “The lyric is Hart at his best, including the closing line: ‘Spring is here, I hear.’ Considering the loneliness of the character, this line wryly sums up his point of view.”

William Zinsser in Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs says, “...The phrase ‘maybe it’s because nobody loves me’ is a cry of pain set to ten consecutive rising notes, followed by an abrupt drop to the wistful ‘spring is here,’ followed by the final drop--almost a whisper--to the ironic ‘I hear.’ I think of these late Rodgers and Hart ballads as women’s songs. No other American songwriters have given women cabaret artists such a sensitive literature.”

Some of the great jazz vocalists to record “Spring Is Here” include Ella Fitzgerald, Sweden’s Monica Zetterlund, Tony Bennett, and Chris Connor in a definitive version in which she wrests every bit of sorrow from heart-wrenching lyric. Pianists Bill Evans and Kenny Drew Sr. and Jr. covered it as well as contemporary artists such as saxophonist Michael Brecker, bassists Charlie Haden and George Mraz, pianist Stephen Scott, and vibists Bobby Hutcherson and Joe Locke.