Despite its familiar title, Warner Bros.' Lullaby of Broadway was an original movie musical, albeit one in which nearly all the songs were vintage titles owned by the film company. And nearly all of them were performed by
Doris Day. Warner did not have a record company, so there could be no soundtrack album, but
Day had a contract with Columbia Records, and she had enjoyed considerable success the previous year by recording tie-in albums from her films Young Man With a Horn and Tea for Two. This
Lullaby of Broadway LP soon joined its predecessors in the Top Five. In the film,
Day had been paired with Gene Nelson, who had been promoted from the second male lead in Tea for Two. Since Nelson had appeared with
Day on the
Tea for Two LP, you might have expected him to turn up here, too, but he didn't. It was just
Day, accompanied by the Norman Luboff Choir and the Buddy Cole Quartet on the title song, "Fine and Dandy" (which was not in the film), and the newly written "I Love the Way You Say Goodnight," and by an orchestra conducted by Frank Comstock on the rest. (Nelson's feature, "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart," was absent, of course.) Since the songs are just a bunch of standards from old films and musicals, the connection to the movie simply provides an excuse for
Day to try out vintage material written by the likes of
George Gershwin and
Cole Porter, and she does well by it. ~ William Ruhlmann