Very Warm for May: History and Key Facts

Very Warm for May is a musical composed by Jerome Kern, with a libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was the team's final score for Broadway, after their hits Show Boat, Sweet Adeline, and Music in the Air. It marked a return to Broadway for Kern, who had spent several years in Hollywood writing music for movies, including Swing Time for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Vincente Minnelli directed Very Warm for May, which opened at the Alvin Theatre on November 17, 1939. It contained such favorite songs as "All the Things You Are", "All in Fun", and "In the Heart of the Dark". Gerald Bordman, author of the definitive Kern biography Jerome Kern: His Life and Music, hailed the score as one of Kern's finest.

Billboard magazine saw the show pre-Broadway, and was enthusiastic: "Prophesied this venture will be a season's hit. The ballet corps keeps the audience awake and eager. Choreography is unique and excellent. Its lyrics, in numbers such as 'All the Things You Are' and 'Up in Harlem' will be taken up soon. Scenery and costumes are colorful, bizarre, and original. 'Very Warm for May' is not one show. It's a three-in-one with enough material for a couple more extravaganzas and maybe a crumb or two to spare."

Very Warm for May ran on Broadway for two months, with June Allyson, Eve Arden, Grace McDonald, Jack Whiting, and Vera-Ellen among the performers. It closed after 59 performances. It received mixed reviews, with the New York World-Telegram calling the show "Gay and delightful" and finding the songs to be "the most charming that Kern and Hammerstein have ever written", while Brooks Atkinson, of the New York Times, commented, "Very Warm for May is not so hot for November", and Robert Benchley of The New Yorker praised the show as "Lovely to the ear and complimentary to the intelligence...unlike most musicals, (it) actually gets better and funnier as it goes on."

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