The Way You Look Tonight is a 1936 jazz standard composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Dorothy Fields for the Fred Astaire film Swing Time. In the film, Astaire sings it to Ginger Rogers while she is washing her hair - a moment that helped make the song famous. The song was published in July 1936 and released as a single in August 1936, and it appears on the Swing Time soundtrack. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936 - the first year the award was given to a musical film song. Over the years it has become a beloved standard, covered by artists such as Billie Holiday with Teddy Wilson, Frank Sinatra, and The Lettermen, and remains a cornerstone of the Hollywood swing era.