Over the Rainbow

Judy Garland, Harold Arlen & Yip Harburg · 1939

Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg’s ballad for The Wizard of Oz — Judy Garland as Dorothy, 1939. The studio nearly cut it; it became her signature, and later took Yiddish words.

The published title is “Over the Rainbow”; English speakers also call it “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Arlen wrote the tune and Harburg the lyric for MGM’s The Wizard of Oz. Garland recorded the film version on October 7, 1938, and a Decca side in 1939. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, and the Library of Congress added the 1939 record to the National Recording Registry (2016 class). Harburg was born Isidore Hochberg on the Lower East Side to Yiddish-speaking parents; the song itself is English. Al Grand’s Yiddish, “Iber dem regnboygn,” is a later life of the same melody — that recording has its own page.