Cole Porter wrote “I Get a Kick Out of You” for a 1931 Broadway show, Star Dust, which never got produced. The song was, however, later used in Porter’s Broadway show Anything Goes in 1934, sung by Ethel Merman. Other notable tunes to come out of that production were “All Through the Night,” “You’re the Top,” and “Anything Goes.” Quite the show.
In 1936, a musical film version was produced, directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Bing Crosby, Ethel Merman, Charles Ruggles, and Ida Lupino. For the record, this is the plot:
A young man falls in love with a beautiful blonde. When he sees her being forced onto a luxury liner, he decides to follow and rescue her. However, he discovers that she is an English heiress who ran away from home and is now being returned to England. He also discovers that his boss is on the ship. To avoid discovery, he disguises himself as the gangster accomplice of a minister, who is actually a gangster on the run from the law.
IMDb
The one thing about this song that “I Get a Kick Out of You” that has always struck me is the way the reference to cocaine comes and go depending on which version one is is hearing. And there’s a good reason for that. It’s called the Motion Picture Production Code of 1934 or the Hays office (William H. Hays was the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America). The code was a set of industry guidelines which asked, and got, self-censorship of the content of U.S. movies released by major studios from 1934 to 1968. The origin of the Hays Code, and the reason the industry fell into line is that, after what were thought to be some particularly risque films and some notable scandals, an image makeover was needed. For a long time, movies got “cleaner.”
Here are some highlights of what the code “suggested,” the interpretation of which must have been a nightmare.
- The technique of murder shall be done in a way that will not inspire imitation.
- Brutal killings shall not be presented in detail.
- Revenge in modern times shall not be justified.
- Theft, robbery, safecracking and dynamiting of trains, mines, buildings, etc., should not be detailed in method.
- Arson must be subject to the same safeguards.
- The use of firearms should be restricted to essentials.
- Illegal drug traffic must never be presented.
- The use of liquor in American life, when not required by the plot, or for proper characterization shall not be shown.
Thus, see number 7 above, illegal drug trafficking, such as implied by the use of cocaine, must never be presented, so that in the 1936 film, this:
Some get a kick from cocaine
I‘m sure that if
I took even one sniff
That would bore me terrif-
Ically, too
Yet, I get a kick out of you
Became this:
Some like the perfume in Spain
This only applied to films, and eventually was ignored by film makers many years later, but it is the reason the reference to cocaine comes and goes depending on the version of “I Get a Kick Out of You” one is hearing. There, doesn’t that make you feel morally upright, not having to listen to that nasty lyric?
Here’s Ethel Merman with the non-offending version. Bonus track is a Sinatra take with the offending line.