"These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)" is a standard with lyrics by Eric Maschwitz, writing under the pseudonym Holt Marvell,[1] and music by Jack Strachey, both Englishmen.
[4] Most sources, including the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, posit cabaret singer Jean Ross,[6][7] with whom Maschwitz had a youthful romantic liaison, as the muse for the song.
[11] Despite being featured in Spread it Abroad, a London revue of 1936,[12] it aroused no interest until the famous West Indian pianist and singer Leslie Hutchinson ("Hutch") discovered it on top of a piano in Maschwitz's office at the BBC.
Popular versions in the USA in 1936 were by Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson with Billie Holiday, Nat Brandywynne, Carroll Gibbons and Joe Sanders.
[15] The song was translated into French under the title Ces petites choses ("These small things") and recorded by Jean Sablon in 1936 and by Ann Savoy in 2007.