Gee, Officer Krupke

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"Officer Krupke" redirects here. For the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, see List of Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes.

"Gee, Officer Krupke" is a comedy number from the 1957 musical West Side Story. The song was composed by Stephen Sondheim (lyrics) and Leonard Bernstein (music), and was featured in both the Broadway musical and subsequent 1961 film.[1]

Content[]

The song is sung by members of the street gang the Jets, who poke fun at the gruff Police Sergeant Krupke by singing about the societal forces that led them to join a gang. Following a theme used throughout the musical, the song begins with a tritone on the word "Dear," held longer to signify its importance.[2][3] Lyrically, the song features four seven-line verses, each filled with puns and wordplay. Each verse culminates with an interjection ("Golly Moses", "Leapin' lizards"), followed by the final line.

The tune was originally composed for an unused song for the Venice scene in Candide, where the lyrics, by John Latouche, ended with the line, "Where does it get you in the end?"[4][5]

Censorship[]

The last line of the song (performed as a "Shave and a Haircut" fanfare) is "Gee, Officer Krupke – Krup you!" Lyricist Stephen Sondheim originally wanted to break a then-existing Broadway taboo by ending the song with "Gee, Officer Krupke – fuck you!", but this was forbidden by Columbia Records, who owned the rights to the cast album. Sondheim changed the wording to "Krup you," and now believes it to be the best lyric in the musical.[6][7]

Stage play vs. film[]

In the original Broadway version, the song appears in the second act, but in the film version the song was moved to Act One, performed by the Jets (with Riff singing lead) prior to their imminent rumble with the Sharks. For the film's release, "Krupke" was switched with "Cool" (which was originally performed in the play's first act) on a request from Sondheim, who disliked the sequence of the songs in the play, feeling it was unfitting to watch a street gang perform a comedy number right after having seen both gang leaders get killed in the rumble.

In popular culture[]

The eighth episode of season seven of Curb Your Enthusiasm is entitled "Officer Krupke". The episode features a police officer whose name is Krupke, and has Larry David describe the controversy over the name. At one point, David is singing the finale of the song and is overheard by others, who think he has said "Fuck you."[citation needed]

References[]

  1. ^ "Track by Track – OCR: Track 13: 'Gee, Officer Krupke!' " by S. Woody White, sondheim.com
  2. ^ [1][dead link]
  3. ^ Jaffee Nagel, Julie (2010). "Psychoanalytic and Musical Ambiguity: The Tritone in Gee, Officer Krupke". Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. 58 (1): 9–25. doi:10.1177/0003065109360555. PMID 20234007.
  4. ^ Stephen Sondheim (2012). West Side Story (1961 film) (Commentary track). MGM Home Video. MGM Home Video.
  5. ^ "Candide" by Michael H. Hutchins, sondheimguide.com
  6. ^ Chirico, Rob (5 July 2016). ""Krup You!" No More: How Broadway Learned to Swear". Retrieved 11 March 2018 – via Slate.
  7. ^ "Look, He Made A Hat: Sondheim Talks Sondheim", NPR, 28 October 2010
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