The Most Beautiful Girl in the World is a show tune with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart, published in 1935. It comes from the Rodgers and Hart musical Jumbo, a Billy Rose production with a book by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, which opened on Broadway at the Hippodrome in 1935. The song was introduced in the show by Gloria Grafton and William J. McCartney, although another source credits the original performance to Gloria Grafton and Donald Novis.
Recordings by Ted Straeter and Tommy Dorsey reached the Billboard Top 40 in 1952 and 1953. Other recordings include those by Sonny Rollins, Les and Larry Elgart, Vaughn Monroe, Vic Damone, Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra. In the 1962 MGM film Jumbo, the song was sung by session singer Jimmy Joyce, who dubbed the voice of actor Stephen Boyd.
