Lydia The Tattooed Lady - Other Versions

Other Versions

The song has been performed by many other artists:

• In the 1940 movie The Philadelphia Story, Dinah Lord (played by Virginia Weidler) sings the song's first verse.
• The song has been recorded by Stubby Kaye (1961), Michael Feinstein (album: Pure Imagination, 1992), and Joan Morris (album: Bolcom, Morris & Morath sing Yip Harburg, 2003).
• In January, 1976, Kermit the Frog sang this song, complete with a Muppet version of Lydia (pig), on the second episode of The Muppet Show, which featured Connie Stevens as the guest star. Muppets creator Jim Henson is said to have considered the song one of his favorites. Henson also drew all the tattoos on the Lydia puppet. The song was also used in Jim Henson's memorial service, performed by Kevin Clash in his ¨Elmo¨ voice.
• On the television series M*A*S*H, Maxwell Klinger sang part of this song in the episode "Images" after seeing the extensive tattoo work on a wounded soldier.
• The song was also sung by Robin Williams in the 1991 film The Fisher King. In that version, the reference to Andrew Jackson is changed to Michael Jackson.
• As lyricist Harburg explains, the final stanza originally contained the lyrics "When she stands, the world gets lit'ler. When she sits, she sits on Hitler"; the lines were removed because the studio feared the song would sound too dated. The line that replaced it begins "Grover Whalen unveilin' the Trylon" which seems far more dated today than the reference to Hitler. On some subsequent radio appearances, Groucho sang the song in its entirety. Feinstein's recording omits a number of other lines, but restores the "Hitler" couplet, while Morris's is essentially as Groucho sang it in At the Circus.
• The couplet "Come along and see Buffalo Bill with his lasso / Just a little classic by Mendel Picasso" seems to flub the name 'Pablo Picasso', noted painter and personality of the 1930s,
• In the 1995 Disney comic "The Treasury of Croesus" by Don Rosa, Donald Duck sings the song throughout the comic. This is a pun on the ancient kingdom of Lydia — as Donald asks whether King Croesus really existed, his uncle Scrooge asks him if he has never heard about Lydia, to which Donald replies that he learned all about Lydia on last night's late movie. When asked to share his newfound knowledge, he starts singing "Lydia the Tattooed Lady".
• In the situation comedy It's a Living, pianist Sonny Mann (Paul Kreppel), meeting a woman whose body is covered with tattoos, plays the song until one of the waitresses flips the keyboard cover onto his fingers (a running gag in the series).
• In season 4 of the Canadian sketch comedy series The Kids in the Hall, a sketch is featured in which an escape artist successful in the '30s, played by Dave Foley, performs the song at Carnegie Hall whilst being hung from the ceiling and bound in a straitjacket as part of his final public performance.