There's a Small Hotel

"There's a Small Hotel"
Song from On Your Toes
Published	1937
Writer(s)	Lorenz Hart
Composer(s)	Richard Rodgers

"There's a Small Hotel" is a 1936 popular song composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Lorenz Hart. Originally written for but dropped from the musical Billy Rose's Jumbo (1935), it was then used in On Your Toes (1936), where it was introduced by Ray Bolger and Doris Carson and also interpolated in the film version of Pal Joey (1957) with a fine Frank Sinatra-Nelson Riddle collaboration.

According to the biography of Lorenz Hart by Frederick Nolan (Lorenz Hart - A Poet on Broadway, 1994; Oxford University Press, ), the song was inspired by a visit that Richard Rodgers made to the Stockton Inn, in , NJ. Hart reputedly found the melody insistently cloying and often ad-libbed raunchy parody verses, much to Rodgers' chagrin.

Another claimant to be the inspiration for the song is the Montecito Inn, in Santa Barbara County, California. Renovations to the hotel in the 1950s replaced the wishing well, mentioned in the song, by a floral fountain.

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