Getting To Know You

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Getting To Know You is a show tune from the 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I.

In the musical, the character of Anna Leonowens sings it to the children of the King of Siam as she develops a fond relationship with them in the classroom.

This song is one of the few cases during the Rodgers and Hammerstein partnership when Rodgers re-used a melody he had written for an earlier show and then discarded. In this case the melody was a tune he wrote for South Pacific, called Suddenly Lucky, which he originally intended for the character of Nellie to sing but replaced it with the song (I'm in Love with) a Wonderful Guy. Mary Martin the star of South Pacific, who had proposed that Rodgers should cast Yul Brynner as the King, reminded Rodgers of this tune, and so Hammerstein wrote new lyrics to it.