"Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries" (Rudy Vallee, 1931)

Rudy Vallee's spot-on mimicry of dialect comedian Willie Howard (who introduced this Ray Henderson/Buddy DeSylva/Lew Brown number in "George White's Scandals of 1931") is one of the more remarkable aspects of this cheery depression buster.

I posted Jack Hylton's version a while back, but that performance skips the well-wrought introduction:

LIFE IS JUST A BOWL OF CHERRIES

People are queer, they're always crowing, scrambling and rushing about;
Why don't they stop someday, address themselves this way?
Why are we here? Where are we going? It's time that we found out.
We're not here to stay; we're on a short holiday.

Life is just a bowl of cherries.
Don't take it serious; it's too mysterious.
You work, you save, you worry so,
But you can't take your dough when you go, go, go.

So keep repeating it's the berries,
The strongest oak must fall,
The sweet things in life, to you were just loaned
So how can you lose what you've never owned?
Life is just a bowl of cherries,
So live and laugh at it all.

Life is just a bowl of cherries.
Don't take it serious; it's too mysterious.
At eight each morning I have got a date,
To take my plunge 'round the Empire State.
You'll admit it's not the berries,
In a building that's so tall;
There's a guy in the show, the girls love to kiss;
Get thousands a week just for crooning like this:
Life is just a bowl of . . . aw, nuts!
So live and laugh at it all!

Видео "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries" (Rudy Vallee, 1931) канала RReady555