Whatever Will Be, Will Be

“Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)”[a] is a song written by the team of Jay Livingston and Ray Evans that was first published in 1955. Doris Day introduced it in the Alfred Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956),singing it as a cue to their onscreen kidnapped son. The three verses of the song progress through the life of the narrator—from childhood, through young adulthood and falling in love, to parenthood—and each asks “What will I be?” or “What lies ahead?” The chorus repeats the answer: “What will be, will be.” Day’s recording of the song for Columbia Records made it to number two on the Billboard Top 100 chart and number one in the UK Singles Chart. It came to be known as Day’s signature song. The song in The Man Who Knew Too Much received the 1956 Academy Award for Best Original Song. It was the third Oscar in this category for Livingston and Evans, who previously won in 1948 and 1950 In 2004 it finished at number 48 in AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema. In 2012, the 1956 recording by Doris Day on Columbia Records was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It was a number-one hit in Australia for pop singer Normie Rowe in September 1965.
The song popularized the title expression “que sera, sera” as an English-language phrase indicating “cheerful fatalism”, though its use in English dates back to at least the 16th century. Contrary to popular perception, the phrase is not Spanish in origin (in Spanish it would be “lo que será, será”), and is ungrammatical in that language. It was evidently formed by a word-for-word mistranslation of English “What will be will be”. The popularity of the song has led to curiosity about the origins of the title saying, “que sera, sera”, and the identity of its language. Both the Spanish-like spelling used by Livingston and Evans and an Italian-like form (“che sarà sarà”) are first documented in the 16th century as an English heraldic motto.[9] The “Spanish” form appears on a brass plaque in the Church of St. Nicholas, Thames Ditton, Surrey, dated 1559.[10] The “Italian” form was first adopted as a family motto by either John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford, or his son, Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford. It is said by some sources to have been adopted by the elder Russell after his experience at the Battle of Pavia (1525), and to be engraved on his tomb (1555 N.S.). The 2nd Earl’s adoption of the motto is commemorated in a manuscript dated 1582. Their successors—Earls and, later, Dukes of Bedford (“Sixth Creation”), as well as other aristocratic families—continued to use the motto. Soon after its adoption as a heraldic motto, it appeared in Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus (written ca. 1590; published 1604), whose text[14] (Act 1, Scene 1) contains a line with the archaic Italian spelling “Che sera, sera / What will be, shall be”. Early in the 17th century the saying begins to appear in the speech and thoughts of fictional characters as a spontaneous expression of a fatalistic attitude. The phrase, in its English form, is used in the novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The saying is always in an English-speaking context, and it has no history in Spanish, Italian, or French; in fact, the saying is ungrammatical in all three of these Romance languages. It is however grammatical in Portuguese in poetic contexts. It is composed of Spanish or Italian words superimposed on English syntax. It was evidently formed by a word-for-word mistranslation of English “What will be will be”, merging the free relative pronoun what (= “that which”) with the interrogative what? Livingston and Evans had some knowledge of Spanish, and early in their career they worked together as musicians on cruise ships to the Caribbean and South America. Composer Jay Livingston had seen the 1954 Hollywood film The Barefoot Contessa, in which a fictional Italian family has the motto “Che sarà sarà” carved in stone at their ancestral mansion. He immediately wrote it down as a possible song title, and he and lyricist Ray Evans later gave it a Spanish spelling “because there are so many Spanish-speaking people in the world”. In modern times, thanks to the popularity of the song and its many translations, the phrase has been adopted in countries around the world to name a variety of entities, including books, movies, restaurants, vacation rentals, airplanes, and race horses