"Ten Cents a Dance" is a popular

Popular music

Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...

 song in which a taxi dancer

Taxi dancer

A taxi dancer, or taxi for short , is a paid dance partner in a partner dance. For official purposes in the US, their occupation was referred to as "dancer", when they worked in taxi-dance halls that had all the necessary business permits...

 laments the hardships of her job. The music was written by Richard Rodgers

Richard Rodgers

Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...

, with lyrics by Lorenz Hart

Lorenz Hart

Lorenz "Larry" Milton Hart was the lyricist half of the famed Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart...

. The song was published in 1930.

The song was originally written for Lee Morse

Lee Morse

Lee Morse was an US jazz and blues singer and songwriter whose most popular years were in the 1920s and early 1930s, although her career began around 1917 and continued until her death in 1954...

 who was acting in the musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 Simple Simon

Simple Simon (musical)

Simple Simon is a Broadway musical with book by Guy Bolton, and Ed Wynn, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, music by Richard Rodgers, produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, and starring Ed Wynn....

, but when Morse showed up intoxicated at the Boston opening of the musical, Florenz Ziegfeld

Florenz Ziegfeld

Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. , , was an American Broadway impresario, notable for his series of theatrical revues, the Ziegfeld Follies , inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris. He also produced the musical Show Boat...

 fired her. She was replaced by Ruth Etting in the show, and Etting popularized the song as well in a Columbia

Columbia Records

Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

 recording made in 1930. This recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999

1999 in music

-Events:*January 7**After eight years of marriage, Rod Stewart and supermodel wife Rachel Hunter announce their separation.**Paul McCartney attends the first of his stepdaughter Heather's first housewares collection in Georgia....

.

Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...

 recorded this song in 1956 on her Verve

Verve Records

Verve Records is an American jazz record label now owned by Universal Music Group. It was founded by Norman Granz in 1956, absorbing the catalogues of his earlier labels, Clef Records and Norgran Records , and material which had been licensed to Mercury previously.-Jazz and folk origins:The Verve...

 double-album Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Songbook.

Barbara Stanwyck

Barbara Stanwyck

Barbara Stanwyck was an American actress. She was a film and television star, known during her 60-year career as a consummate and versatile professional with a strong screen presence, and a favorite of directors including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang and Frank Capra...

 starred in the film Ten Cents a Dance

Ten Cents a Dance (1931 film)

Ten Cents a Dance is a 1931 romantic drama film starring Barbara Stanwyck as a married taxi dancer who falls in love with one of her customers...

(1931), which was inspired by the song. In the MGM biographical film about Etting, Love Me or Leave Me

Love Me or Leave Me (film)

Love Me or Leave Me is a 1955 biographical film which tells the life story of Ruth Etting, a singer who rose from dancer to movie star. It stars Doris Day as Etting, James Cagney as gangster Martin "Moe the Gimp" Snyder, her first husband and manager, and Cameron Mitchell as pianist/ arranger Myrl...

(1955), the song is performed by Doris Day

Doris Day

Doris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...

. The Day recording was also released by Columbia. Michelle Pfeiffer

Michelle Pfeiffer

Michelle Marie Pfeiffer is an American actress. She made her film debut in 1980 in The Hollywood Knights, but first garnered mainstream attention with her performance in Brian De Palma's Scarface . Pfeiffer has won numerous awards for her work...

 also performs the song in the film The Fabulous Baker Boys

The Fabulous Baker Boys

The Fabulous Baker Boys is a 1989 American romantic drama musical film written and directed by Steve Kloves, and starring real life brothers Jeff Bridges and Beau Bridges as two brothers struggling to make a living as lounge jazz pianists in Seattle...

(1989).

In an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

The Mary Tyler Moore Show is an American television sitcom created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns that aired on CBS from 1970 to 1977...

titled "Rhoda the Beautiful", Cloris Leachman

Cloris Leachman

Cloris Leachman is an American actress of stage, film and television. She has won eight Primetime Emmy Awards—more than any other performer—and one Daytime Emmy Award...

 sings this song, reminiscing about her character's glory days as a pageant winner.

In the stage play Some Men

Some Men

Some Men is a 2006 play by Terrence McNally, consisting of an interwoven series of stories which chronicle and contrast the lives and attitudes of gay men in the United States over the past 80 years...

, by Terrance McNally, the character Angel Eyes claims that the song was written with him in mind, although he never mentions Lorenz Hart by name.

The song is featured in the 2010 video game BioShock 2

BioShock 2

BioShock 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Marin for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The sequel to the 2007 video game BioShock, it was released worldwide on February 9, 2010....

.

Parodies

In the cartoon show Cow & Chicken episode "Supermodel Cow", Cow becomes a celebrity. After she loses popularity, she is found by her brother in a milk bar singing "10 Cents a Glass." In the cartoon Ducktails, the story of how Scrooge McDuck

Scrooge McDuck

Scrooge McDuck is a cartoon character created in 1947 by Carl Barks and licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Scrooge is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a red or blue frock coat, top hat, pince-nez glasses, and spats...

 met personal pilot Launchpad McQuack involves them dickering over McQuack's rate of pay, with McQuack confusingly suggesting "ten cents a dance" instead of "ten cents a mile."