Thanks for the Memory

One of my favorite songs in a movie is "Thanks for the Memory" sung by Bob Hope and Shirley Ross (who plays his ex-wife) while sitting at a bar on a cruise ship in the movie "Big Broadcast of 1938". The song won an Academy Award. Bob Hope adopted it as his career-long theme song after the movie. The words and music are by Leo Robin and Ralph Raniger:

Thanks for the memory
Of candlelight and wine, castles on the Rhine
The Parthenon and monents on the Hudson River Line.
How lovely it was!

Thanks for the memory
Of rainy afternoons, swingy Harlem tunes
And motor trips and burning lips and burning toast and prunes.
How lovely it was!

Many's the time that we feasted
And many's the time that we fasted.
Oh, well, it was swell while it lasted,
We did have fun and no harm done

And thanks for the memory
Of sunburns at the shore, nights in Singapore.
You might have been a headache but you never were a bore,
So thank you so much.

Thanks for the memory
Of sentimental verse, nothing in my purse
And chuckles when the preaher said "For better or for worse."
How lovely it was.

Thanks for the memory
Of lingerie with lace, Pilsner by the case
And how I jumped the day you trumped my one-and-only ace.
How lovely it was!

We said goodbye with a highball
Then I got as "high" as a steeple
But we were intelligent people
No tear, no fuss, Hooray! for us.

So, thanks for the memory
And strictly entre-nouts, darling how are you?
And how are all the little dreams that never did come true?
Aw'flly glad I met you, cheerio and toodle-oo
And thank you so much.

Bob Hope and Shirley Ross in 1937

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