"The Nearness of You" is a popular song written in 1937 by Hoagy Carmichael with lyrics by Ned Washington. Intended for an unproduced Paramount film titled Romance In The Rough, the studio's publishing division Famous Music reregistered and published the song in 1940. It was first recorded by Chick Bullock and his Orchestra on Vocalion. Despite numerous accounts to the contrary, the song was never scheduled for and does not appear in the 1938 Paramount film Romance in the Dark.
The Nearness of You
Hoagland Howard Carmichael was an American musician, composer, songwriter, actor and lawyer. Carmichael was one of the most successful Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s, and was among the first singer-songwriters in the age of mass media to utilize new communication technologies such as television, microphones, and sound recordings.
Carmichael in 1947
Carmichael's house in Bloomington, Indiana (2011)
Carmichael, Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews and Theresa Wright in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Carmichael sharing the Saturday Night Revue duties with George Gobel, 1953