Lydia the Tattooed Lady

"Lydia the Tattooed Lady", which became one of Groucho Marx's signature tunes, was written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, and first appeared in the 1939 Marx Brothers movie At the Circus. The lyrics make many contemporary references to topical personalities such as Grover Whalen.

Amongst the items, persons, and scenes tattooed on Lydia's body are the Battle of Waterloo (on her back), The Wreck of the Hesperus (beside it), the red, white and blue (above them); the cities of Kankakee and "Paree", Washington Crossing the Delaware, President Andrew Jackson, Niagara Falls, Alcatraz (on a clear day), Buffalo Bill, a Picasso, Captain Spaulding exploring the Amazon, Lady Godiva (with her pajamas on), Grover Whalen, the Trylon, Treasure Island, Nijinsky, a fleet of ships (on her hips), and Lydia's own Social Security number.

[edit] Other versions

The song has been performed by many other artists:

In the 1940 movie The Philadelphia Story, Dinah Lord (played by Virginia Weidler) sings the song.

The song has been recorded by Stubby Kaye (1961), Michael Feinstein (album: Pure Imagination, 1992), and Joan Morris (album: Bolcom, Morris & Morath sing Yip Harburg, 2003).

In January 1976, Kermit the Frog sang this song, complete with a Muppet version of Lydia (interestingly enough, a pig), on the second episode of The Muppet Show, which featured Connie Stevens as the guest star. Muppets creator Jim Henson is said to have considered the song one of his favorites. Henson also drew all the tattoos on the Lydia puppet.

The song was also sung by Robin Williams in the 1991 film The Fisher King. In that version, the reference to Andrew Jackson is changed to Michael Jackson.

As lyricist Harburg explains, the final stanza originally contained the lyrics "When she stands her lap gets lit'ler/When she sits, she sits on Hitler"; the lines were removed because the studio feared the song would sound too dated. On some subsequent radio appearances, Groucho sang the song in its entirety. Feinstein's recording omits a number of other lines, but restores the "Hitler" couplet, while Morris's is essentially as Groucho sang it in At the Circus.

In the 1995 Disney comic "The Treasury of Croesus"^[1] by Don Rosa, Donald Duck sings the song throughout the comic. This is a pun on the ancient kingdom of Lydia — as Donald asks whether King Croesus really existed, his uncle Scrooge asks him if he has never heard about Lydia, to which Donald replies that he learned all about Lydia on last night's late movie. When asked to share his newfound knowledge, he starts singing "Lydia the Tattooed Lady".

In the situation comedy It's a Living, pianist Sonny Mann (Paul Kreppel), meeting a woman whose body is covered with tattoos, plays the song until one of the waitresses flips the keyboard cover onto his fingers (a running gag in the series).