The Saga of Jenny

"The Saga of Jenny" is a popular song written for the 1941 Broadway musical Lady in the Dark, with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ira Gershwin, considered now as a blues standard. The music is marked "Allegretto quasi andantino"; Gershwin describes it as "a sort of blues bordello". It was premiered by Gertrude Lawrence in the role of Liza Elliott, the editor of a fashion magazine. In the context of the show, the song comes in a dream sequence in which Elliott defends her indecision about marriage by telling the tale of "a girl named Jenny/Whose virtues were varied and many—/Excepting that she was inclined/Always to make up her mind", until she "kicked the bucket at 76." Jenny's decisive nature is blamed for multiple disasters, including forcing the necessity of the United States' Good Neighbor Policy.