Love and Marriage

According to Thomas Hischak in his book The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia, the 1955 ditty "Love And Marriage" was "probably the biggest Tin Pan Alley hit to come out of a television special." With lyrics by Sammy Cahn and music by Jimmy Van Heusen, it was written for a musical version of the 1938 Thornton Wilder play Our Town, in which it was sung by Frank Sinatra. It has since been recorded by Eddie Fisher, Frankie Vaughan and Peggy Lee, among others. In 1987, it was used as the theme song for the American TV series Married With Children, which ran for eleven seasons.

The song's proposition that love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage does not sound so impressive in 21st Century America, when (according to US Government figures) nearly four babies in ten were born out of wedlock in 2005. And it sounds even less impressive when you realize that a horse is backed blindly onto a carriage and spends its working life pulling a heavy load only to be rewarded with a bag of oats a day and an occasional crack of a whip.