"Long Ago (and Far Away)" is a popular song with music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics about nostalgia[1] by Ira Gershwin from the 1944 Technicolor film musical Cover Girl starring Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly and released by Columbia Pictures.
[2] In 2004 it finished #92 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema.
In the film it is sung by Rita Hayworth (dubbed by Martha Mears) to Gene Kelly, and later briefly reprised by Jinx Falkenburg.
Charting versions were recorded almost simultaneously by Dick Haymes and Helen Forrest, Bing Crosby,[3] Jo Stafford, and Perry Como.
[5] Johnny Desmond sang it in German with Glenn Miller and the American Band of the AEF during World War II.