The Man That Got Away
song written by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin, for the 1954 film A Star is Born
"The Man That Got Away" is a torch song written for the 1954 version of A Star Is Born. The song, with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by Ira Gershwin, is performed in the film by Judy Garland. "The Man That Got Away" was ranked #11 by the American Film Institute on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs list. It was nominated for Best Original Song at the 27th Academy Awards but lost to "Three Coins in the Fountain".
Composition
The decision by Warner Bros. in late 1952 to remake A Star Is Born, after the successful 1937 film version, offered a career comeback opportunity for Judy Garland who had been let go by MGM in 1950. Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin were signed on to the film project to contribute new songs. Arlen had previously provided Garland with her signature songs "Over the Rainbow" and "Get Happy".
The two men's mode of collaboration was to meet in the afternoon at Gershwin's Beverly Hills home, with Arlen seated at the piano, and Gershwin writing lyrics while seated in a nearby armchair. "The Man That Got Away" was created to fulfill a request from screenwriter Moss Hart for a "dive song" in the film.
“The Man That Got Away” enters the record as song written by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin, for the 1954 film A Star is Born. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Away, song and written can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“The Man That Got Away” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Away, song and written provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7749892. The Library of Congress control number is no2001101197. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954, 1952, 1937 and 1950.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Man That Got Away” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.