Party Song

Last week, as much of the U.S. sweltered, people were humming a bouncy new jukebox favorite called Baby, It's Cold Outside. It was all about a girl who kept protesting that she had to go home and a boy who kept insisting that she stay. Outside, he warned, the snow was knee-deep. Queasy NBC first banned the lyrics as too racy, then decided they contained nothing provably prurient, and put the tune on the air. Baby hit the hit parade and began climbing.

The proud papa was Songsmith Frank Loesser, a Hollywood Tin Pan Alleyite whose specialty is producing catchy, shortlived jingles about leaky faucets (Bloop, Bleep) and slow boats to China. But Baby was not even written for public consumption. Loesser ran it off five years ago as a comedy number for himself and his wife, Lynn, to sing at parties. It was surefire when his songstress wife, with appropriate handwringing, began singing "I really can't stay . . . I've got to go 'way," and Loesser answered pleadingly, "But Baby, it's cold outside!" After that the pace picks up, with her reasons for saying "goodnight" getting sugar-coated neverminds, line by line:

She: My mother -will start to worry.

He: /'// hold your hands--they're just like ice . . .

She: And father will be pacing the floor.

He: Beautiful, what's your hurry? Listen to the fireplace roar.

She: -So really, I'd better scurry. Well, maybe just a half-a-drink more.

When duo vocals really caught the public's fancy last year, Loesser polished up the lyrics and inserted Baby into the score of a picture, Neptune's Daughter (see CINEMA), that he was doing for MGM. Spotting it as a natural, record companies put their best boy-&-girl teams to recording it. First with the best: Dinah Shore and Buddy Clark (Columbia), Margaret Whiting and Johnny Mercer (Capitol). Mercury even got Frank and Lynn Loesser on wax. MGM, which peddles records as well as motion pictures, and originally had the inside track on Baby, was left at the post and lamely put out a record of the song from the film's soundtrack.

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