The Lady Is a Tramp is a 1937 show tune from the Rodgers and Hart musical Babes in Arms, introduced by Mitzi Green. The lyric playfully spoofs New York high society and its etiquette, opening with the line I get too hungry for dinner at eight, and it has since become a standard of the Great American Songbook. The song was published in 1937, appears in the 1939 Babes in Arms film as an instrumental, and has been recorded by many artists including Tommy Dorsey, Lena Horne, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Pat Suzuki and Shirley Bassey. It helped cement Sinatra as a longtime interpreter of the tune and even inspired a humorous variant he performed called The Gentleman Is a Champ. The title also influenced Disney’s 1955 film Lady and the Tramp. In 2011 Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga recorded a swingy jazz version for the album Duets II, released as a single.
