To Love and Be Loved

Written for the 1958 Frank Sinatra film Some Came Running, this tender ballad earned Cahn and Van Heusen an Academy Award nomination. Jane Morgan’s recording was the bigger commercial hit, but Sinatra’s version — written for his own film — carries an unmistakable personal weight.

The title states the oldest human wish as plainly as possible, and Cahn’s lyric spends three minutes proving that the simplest ideas are often the most profound.