Word is reaching us that a line in the lyric of the Tony Bennett classic hit and signature song I Left My Heart in San Francisco has been re-written because it contains the "G" word.

Before getting into the verse of San Francisco’s unofficial anthem, Bennett and countless others have always crooned in the refrain: “The loveliness of Paris seems somehow sadly gay”.

But as one American reader of UK Gay News has suggested:  “This is no good for moral America, especially for a school performance of the song.”

The offending word “gay” is out – can’t have the kiddies singing that in Bush’s America where kids are not supposed to see a cartoon character visiting a couple of kids who happen to have two moms!

So in comes the re-written line “The loveliness of Paris seems so sad, I'd say.”

Fair enough, the new line scans well into the song.  But has not the entire meaning of the line been altered?

It was in 1954 that Douglass Cross originally wrote the lyric and what we would call today his “gay lover” George Cory composed the music [there are three references to the sexuality of the pair we found on the internet].  The song remained in obscurity until Tony Bennett and his then record company Columbia recorded in song in 1962.

But when Cross penned the words and Bennett first recorded the song, the word “gay” meant  “vivacious, happy and cheerful” and had nothing to do with sexuality.

It was Bennett’s pianist Ralph Sharon who discovered the song.  “Ralph found it,” Bennett said in a radio interview three years ago. “The two guys, Douglass Cross and George Cory, who wrote it used to be friends of Billie Holiday.  Ralph knew them.  We were in Little Rock, Arkansas, on our way to San Francisco for the first time.  He said, ‘I think this is a good song to sing in the city.’  We had no idea.  We thought it would make a good local song. I had no idea it would be my signature song. It changed my whole career.”

Both Cross and Cory were born in 1920, but Cory died in 1978.  According to music publisher EMI in London, Cross is still living. “we have no note of his death,” a spokesperson said.

And where did this re-write of the Cross lyric happen?  Unbelievably, in the city where the “little cable cars stretch halfway to the stars!”

The censors at Town School for Boys, we are told, came up with the alternative lyrics for a performance by the school choir at their Grandparents Day just before Easter.

But we have to ask ... Will Town School, San Francisco, ban a production of The Beggar’s Opera, or will it be produced with no reference to its composer, John Gay.  And will the New York Times be banned in the school if there is an article  written by the newspaper's political writer in Washington, Sheryl Gay Stolberg?

28 March  2005