"Manhattan" is a song by Richard Rodgers (music) and Lorenz Hart (lyrics), written for the Broadway revue Garrick Gaieties, which opened in May 1925. At a benefit matinee on 17 May 1925, Sterling Holloway and June Cochran performed it halfway through the second act, in front of a plain curtain, and it stopped the show. The show then ran for 211 performances. Edward B. Marks Music Co. published the song in 1925, and early hit recordings that year were made by Ben Selvin, as The Knickerbockers, and by Paul Whiteman.
The song is part of the Great American Songbook. It was first heard on film in the 1929 short Makers of Melody and was later used in Words and Music (1948), Two Tickets to Broadway (1951), Don't Bother to Knock (1952) and Beau James (1957). It has been recorded by many artists, including Lee Wiley, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Blossom Dearie, Mel Torme, Oscar Peterson and the Supremes. It is often known by its opening line rather than its title.
