"I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" is a popular American song which debuted in 1918 and was first published in 1919.

***

The waltz was a major Tin Pan Alley hit, and was performed and recorded by most major singers and bands of the late 1910s and early 1920s. The song was a hit for Ben Selvin's Novelty Orchestra in 1919. The Original Dixieland Jass Band recording of the number is an unusual early example of jazz in 3/4 time.

The writer Ring Lardner parodied the lyric during the Black Sox scandal of 1919, when he began to suspect that players on the Chicago White Sox (a United States based baseball team) were deliberately losing the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.^[1] His version began: "I'm forever blowing ballgames."

The song also became a hit with the public in British music halls and theatres during the early 1920s. Dorothy Ward was especially renowned for making the song famous with her appearances at these venues. The song was also used by English comedian "Professor" Jimmy Edwards as his signature tune - played on the trombone. Harpo Marx would play the song on clarinet, which would then begin emitting bubbles. The melody is frequently quoted in animated cartoon sound tracks when bubbles are visible. The title air, or first line of the chorus, is quoted in the 1920s song "Singing in the Bathtub", also a popular standard in cartoon sound tracks, including being repeatedly sung by Tweety Bird.

The song features extensively in the 1931 prohibition gangster movie The Public Enemy starring James Cagney. It also was sung by a white bird in the Merrie Melodies cartoon I Love to Singa. A parody of the song was written and performed as "I'm Forever Blowing Bubble-Gum" by Spike Jones and his City Slickers. In Ken Russell's 1969 film Women in Love the song is featured in an unusual scene where two sisters, played by Glenda Jackson and Jennie Linden, wander away from a large picnic gathering and are confronted by a large herd of bullocks. In the early 1970s, The Bonzo Dog Band's stage show featured a robot that sang the title air while blowing bubbles. A solo guitar rendition is periodically featured within the action of Woody Allen's 1999 film Sweet And Lowdown.^[2] Director Brad Mays paid homage to that scene in his 2008 film The Watermelon, in which actress Kiersten Morgan sings the song while dancing on a Malibu beach.^[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Forever_Blowing_Bubbles

Comment: As a kid I recall this song playing as the tightly wrapped corpse of Jimmy Cagney's  Public Enemy [directed by "Wild" Bill Wellmann] anti-hero  Tommy Powers falls through the doorway of his mother's house.

The song was also used to excellent effect in Woody Allen's tragi-comic "Sweet & Lowdown" starring Sean Penn in one of his best roles as Emmet Ray a fictional rival of the great Gypsy jazz guitar-player Django Reinhardt. The Ray character throws away the nearly unconditional love of a deaf-mute woman & only realizes what he's done when its too damn late. We mess things up sometimes. Other times we just get very very lucky.

In fact, Howard Alden was the actual soundtrack guitarist for Sweet and Lowdown.

Howard Alden (born October 17, 1958 (age 54)))^[1] is an American jazz guitarist born in Newport Beach, California. He has recorded a long series of albums for Concord Records. His performances were dubbed over Sean Penn as 'Emmet Ray' in the 1999 Woody Allen film Sweet and Lowdown. Howard has recorded four albums with seven-string guitar innovator George Van Eps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Alden

I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles

Verse 1

I'm dreaming dreams,

I'm scheming schemes,

I'm building castles high.

They're born anew,

Their days are few,

Just like a sweet butterfly.

And as the daylight is dawning,

They come again in the morning.

Chorus

I'm forever blowing bubbles,

Pretty bubbles in the air,

They fly so high,

Nearly reach the sky,

Then like my dreams,

They fade and die.

Fortune's always hiding,

I've looked everywhere,

I'm forever blowing bubbles,

Pretty bubbles in the air.

Verse 2

When cattle creep,

When I'm asleep,

To lands of hope I stray.

Then at daybreak,

When I awake,

My bluebird flutters away.

Happiness new seemed so near me,

Happiness come forth and heal me.

Chorus

I'm forever blowing bubbles,

Pretty bubbles in the air.

They fly so high,

Nearly reach the sky,

Then like my dreams,

They fade and die.

Fortune's always hiding,

I've looked everywhere,

I'm forever blowing bubbles,

Pretty bubbles in the air.

--song written by James Kendis, James Brockman, and Nat Vincent  aka Jaan Kenbrovin