Remember my forgotten man

Words by AL DUBLIN
Music by HARRY WARREN
From the 1933 film GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933
And the album HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD:
THE BEST OF BUSBY BERKELY AT WARNER BROS (1995)
Sung by ETTA MOTEN, JOAN BLONDELL AND CHORUS

A lot of people who have posted videos of jazz musicians performing this on YouTube have misinterpreted it as the song of a war-widow for her deceased husband. In fact, she is singing about the effects of the Great Depression, which started in 1929 and lasted for most of the 30's, upon her husband, at a time when a woman who wasn't financially supported by family or a husband faced terrifying uncertainty at least. In the film the men, veterans of the First World War, are shades of themselves. They have no job, therefore not only no self esteem but no means to support their families. It marked one of America's darkest moments, and was more or less contemporaneous with President FD Roosevelt's inauguration of the "New Deal". The next year, Etta Moten, who takes the second part of the song, became the first black woman to sing at the Whitehouse, on the occasion of FDR's birthday. This is the song she sang.

I don't know if I deserve a bit of sympathy,
Save your sympathy, that's all right with me.
I was satisfied to drift along from day to day,
'Til you came and took my man away!

Remember my forgotten man,
You put a rifle in his hand,
You sent him far away,
You shouted "hip-hooray,"
But look at him today!

Remember my forgotten man,
You had him cultivate the land,
He walked behind a plow,
The sweat fell from his brow,
But look at him right now!

And once he used to love me,
I was happy, then!
He used to take care of me,
Won't you bring him back again?
'Cause ever since the world began,
A woman's got to have a man,
Forgetting him, you see,
Means you're forgetting me,
Like my forgotten man!