The lyrics for Easter Parade are fairly self-explanatory, except perhaps the lines: "On the avenue, Fifth Avenue, the photographers will snap us, And you'll find that you're in the rotogravure." As I mentioned in part one of this song story, Fifth Avenue was the street most famous for people parading their Easter finery, many as they left St. Patrick's Cathedral. As for "the rotogravure" well, rotogravure was a mechanized process developed in the early 1900's to print photographs for newspapers. Frequently photos of interest- such as society pics- would be printed together in a supplement for the papers; this supplement was generally referred to as "the rotogravure" and that's what is being sung about in Easter Parade. Also, the "sonnet" which the singer considers writing about the Easter bonnet is, of course a form of poem which has been around since the 13th century; it has fourteen lines and a strict rhyme scheme. The term "sonnet" is Italian for "little song" and during the Renaissance it became the most popular mode of poetry for expressing romantic love for a person- or in this case, a hat.
At one point, the singer says "I'll be all in clover/And when they look you over/ I'll be the proudest fellow/ in the Easter parade." The idiom "I'll be all in clover" used here means to be at ease and prosperous, and takes its meaning from cows living their best life, chowing down on prime clover. The expression dates back at least to the 1700's and can be found in Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary: "To live in Clover, is to live luxuriously; clover being extremely delicious and fattening to cattle." The earliest known written use of the phrase was in a 1710 poem entitled "To The Divine Apollo": "I liv’d in Clover, to my thinking,/’Till I perceiv’d the Rino (Money) sinking."
Well, that's about all I can think of to say about "Easter Parade"; just a reminder that any Easter plans you have can only be enhanced by the wearing of an Easter bonnet- or, for the guys, escorting a lady who is accoutered in her finest millinery.