A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody

"A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody" is a popular song written by Irving Berlin in 1919 which became the theme song of the Ziegfeld Follies. The first verse and refrain are considered part of the Great American Songbook and are often covered as a jazz standard.

The portion of the song composed entirely by Berlin and published as sheet music comprised the first verse and refrain of the original stage number. The refrain begins, "A pretty girl is like a melody / That haunts you night and day", a summary of the song's extended simile. The refrain is better known than the introductory verse, which Rubins calls "mercifully little-known".

The later verses from the original 1919 stage show were patter lyrics by Berlin to the air of classical tunes; this was a common Tin Pan Alley trick. These verses were comical vignettes of the singer's past trysts, successful or otherwise. Their lyrics were long believed lost, but survived in the show's unpublished script, and were also recalled by cast member Doris Eaton Travis (1904–2010). The source music was:

Magee concludes, from Travis' lack of memory of the Träumerei, that it was dropped from the number during rehearsals.

Berlin had agreed with Florenz Ziegfeld to write one act of the 1919 follies, including a "Ziegfeld Girl number" to showcase the showgirls. He first conceived of the classical portion, to match costumes the girls would be wearing. He needed a framing device for the entire sequence, and so subsequently wrote the initial verse and refrain which would become famous.

In the 1919 Follies, the song was sung by the tenor John Steel. He sang the first verse and chorus alone on stage; then each of the remaining five verses while a showgirl sashayed by in costume appropriate to the quoted air. The final refrain saw Steel surrounded by all five beauties. This format was the template for similar numbers in many musical revues of subsequent decades.

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