Too Marvelous for Words

Hi,

My two little loves. I'd like to begin this post by saying how much I love you and how wonderful it is to be with you every day. I'm planning to write in English so that our friends who live in civilization can understand and participate in this marvelous adventure with you. I will leave you with a song that explains everything. (here)

You're just too marvelous
Too marvelous for words
Like glorious, glamorous
And that old standby, amorous

You're just too wonderful
I'll never find the words
That tell enough, spell enough
I mean, they just aren't swell enough

You're much too much
And just too very, very
To ever be in Webster's Dictionary

And so I'm borrowing
A love song from the birds
To tell you that you're marvelous
Too marvelous for words


"Too Marvelous for Words" is a popular song written in 1937. Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics for music composed by Richard Whiting. It was featured in the 1937 Warner Brothers film Ready, Willing and Able, as well as a production number in a musical revue on Broadway. It then became the love theme in the 1947 film noir Dark Passage directed by Delmer Daves, first in a version sung by Jo Stafford, then just instrumental as the love that finally reunites Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart is Too Marvelous for Words indeed.

Alec Wilder praised the song as a "model of pop song writing, musically and lyrically". He cites its surprising shifts in rhythm and key.

The lyrics are sophisticated and perfectly synchronized with the tune. Mercer successfully borrowed some lyric techniques from Ira Gershwin, and like Gershwin, he writes more about language than about love. Margaret Whiting said of the lyrics, that the song was an enormously original approach to saying "I love you, honey."