I'll Be Hard to Handle is a song composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Bernard Dougall, written for the 1933 Broadway musical Roberta, which featured a book and lyrics by Otto Harbach adapted from Alice Duer Miller's novel. The tune stands out as a rhythmic, uptempo highlight within a score better known for its lush ballads, including Yesterdays and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Kern's melody blends his characteristic melodic elegance with American syncopation, reflecting his movement away from European waltz influences toward fox-trot and swing-oriented rhythms during this period. Reports from the original production noted that audiences left the theater whistling the score, and I'll Be Hard to Handle contributed to that enthusiasm with its lively, danceable energy. The song was retained in the 1935 RKO film adaptation of Roberta, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, with revised lyrics by Dougall, and it appeared again in the 1952 MGM remake Lovely to Look At. Kern had initially envisioned Roberta as a semi-operetta in the vein of his earlier works The Cat and the Fiddle and Music in the Air, but the show evolved into more traditional musical comedy territory, and I'll Be Hard to Handle exemplifies that spirited, accessible side of the production. The composition entered the jazz repertoire as a vehicle for improvisation, its swinging character and sturdy harmonic framework making it well suited to instrumental and vocal interpretation across a range of styles.
