Cheek to Cheek

"Cheek to Cheek" is a song written by Irving Berlin in 1935,^[1] for the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie Top Hat (1935).^[2] In the movie, Astaire sings the song to Rogers as they dance. The song was nominated for the Best Song Oscar for 1936, which it lost to "Lullaby of Broadway".^[3] The song spent five weeks at #1 on Your Hit Parade and was named the #1 song of 1935.^[2] Astaire's 1935 recording with the Leo Reisman Orchestra was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000.^[4] In 2004, Astaire's version finished at No. 15 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema.

Recorded versions[edit]

Fred Astaire – 1935, No. 1 hit^[2]
Guy Lombardo – reached No. 2 in 1935
The Boswell Sisters – charted in 1935^[5]
Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald on the album Ella and Louis (1956)
Doris Day on the album Hooray for Hollywood (1958)
Billie Holiday on the album All or Nothing at All (1958)
Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy on the album With Love from Hollywood (1959)
Frank Sinatra on the album Come Dance with Me! (1959)
Alex Harvey on the album Penthouse Tapes (1976)
Taco on the album After Eight (1982)
Eva Cassidy on the album Live at Blues Alley (1996)
Max Raabe on the album Max Raabe & Palast Orchester [1] (2005)
Rod Stewart on the album Fly Me to the Moon... The Great American Songbook Volume V (2012)
Todd Gordon and Horse McDonald recorded a duet version with the Royal Air Force Squadronaires big band for the album Helping the Heroes (2012)
Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga on the album Cheek to Cheek (2014)
Angelina Jordan on the album It's Magic (2018)
Elisa Jo on the album Kicks (2020)
Ella Fitzgerald on album Ella: The Lost Berlin Tapes (2020)

A sequence from Top Hatwith Fred Astaire singing the song while dancing is shown on an outdoor moviescreen in the Oscar-winning 1996 film The English Patient.
It was also heard in the 1999 film The Green Mile
The song was heard in the 2017 animated film The Boss Baby.
A rendition was also heard at the work Christmas party in the 2020 film Godmothered.

^ Irving Berlin Collection description from the Library of Congress's online Performing Arts Encyclopedia; retrieved 2012-03-07.
^ a b c "Cheek to Cheek" by Fred Astaire, 1935 Archived 2014-10-12 at the Wayback Machine; from the University of Virginia's American Studies website, subsection "Manufacturing Memory Archived 2014-10-14 at the Wayback Machine: 1935-1939"; retrieved 2012-03-07.
^ The 8th Academy Awards (1936) Nominees and Winners, from the website of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science (www.oscar.org); retrieved 2012-03-07.
^ Grammy Hall of Fame page from www.grammy.org; retrieved 2012-04-07.
^ Whitburn, Joel (1986). Joel Whitburn's Pop Memories 1890-1954. Wisconsin, USA: Record Research Inc. p. 484. ISBN 0-89820-083-0.