We’re in the Money (arr. Wadsworth)

arranged Wadsworth

We’re in the Money

“We’re in the Money” wasn’t so much a laughter-raiser in its day as a Depression-lifter. It was written for the Busby Berkeley film Gold Diggers of 1933 when, as the first lines of the song clearly indicate, the Depression was on everyone’s mind:

We're in the money, we're in the money;

We've got a lot of what it takes to get along!

We're in the money, that sky is sunny,

Old Man Depression you are through, you done us wrong.

Sung at the beginning of the film by Ginger Rogers with leggy chorus girls in coin costumes, it should certainly have done the trick.

“We’re in the Money” has since lost its Depression associations, not least through its presence in the 1980 Broadway Musical 42nd Street, which featured more than a dozen of Harry Warren’s songs from his Warner Brothers years - including the best known of all his compositions "Lullaby Of Broadway" which had won the second ever Academy Award for best song in 1935.