"[4] Fred Astaire introduced "Night and Day" on November 29, 1932, when Gay Divorce opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

[5] The song was so associated with Porter that when Hollywood filmed his life story in 1946, with Cary Grant, the movie was entitled Night and Day.

A week before the musical Gay Divorce opened in November 1932, Astaire gathered with Leo Reisman and His Orchestra at Victor’s Gramercy Recording Studio in Manhattan to make a record of two Cole Porter compositions, "Night and Day" backed with "I've Got You on My Mind".

All was done under the dark shadow cast by the 1929 Stock Market Crash, which had spawned the Great Depression, the worst economic disaster in American history.

[1] On May 23, 1933, Astaire recorded it again (due to anti-trust concerns) for Columbia Graphophone Company Ltd., which was now a part of Electric and Musical Industries (EMI).

[8] Others mention that he was inspired by a mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, having visited Ravenna during his honeymoon trip to Italy.

This section repeats and is followed by a descending harmonic sequence starting with a -7♭5 (half diminished seventh chord or Ø) built on the augmented fourth of the key, and descending by semitones—with changes in the chord quality—to the supertonic minor seventh, which forms the beginning of a more standard II-V-I progression.

"[12] Film critic David Denby called "Night and Day" "Cole Porter's greatest song" and the Astaire–Rogers dance duet a vision of the sublime.