Fifty-seven composers, from Harold Arlen to Victor Young, are listed in “The Great Tunesmiths of Hollywood’s Golden Age,” spanning the period from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s.
Clockwise from top left: Irving Berlin, Jimmy Van Heusen, Harry Warren, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Jule Stein (with Barbra), Jay Livingston, Sammy Fain, Frank Loesser.
THE GREAT TUNESMITHS
The table consists of 203 songs, classified based on their Composer, with the song’s lyricist included. It also consists of the film’s title, the director, the actor (PLUS the behind-the-scenes singer, if the actor was dubbed – a common occurrence at this juncture in Hollywood), who introduced the song, and whether it was nominated or won the Oscar outright. A mirror-image post in which the same 203 songs are classified based on the Lyricist is also fun to read. Check it out at: The Great Lyricists of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
HERE ARE 25 CLASSIC SONGS FROM HOLLYWOOD’S GOLDEN AGE THAT WERE WRITTEN DIRECTLY FOR THE SCREEN.
BUT WERE NOT NOMINATED FOR AN OSCAR BY THE MUSIC BRANCH OF THE ACADEMY
I Only Have Eyes for You (1934): Harry Warren and Al Dubin
(Dames)
My Old Flame (1934): Arthur Johnson and Sam Coslow
(Belle of the Nineties)
I’m in the Mood for Love (1935): Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields
(Every Night at Eight)
Let’s Face the Music and Dance (1936): Irving Berlin
(Follow the Fleet)
Pick Yourself Up (1936): Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields
(Swing Time)
Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off (1937) George and Ira Gershwin
(Shall We Dance)
A Foggy Day (in London Town) (1937) George and Ira Gershwin
(A Damsel in Distress)
Nice Work If You Can Get It (1937) George and Ira Gershwin
(A Damsel in Distress)
I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm (1937) Irving Berlin
(On the Avenue)
The Folks Who Live on the Hill (1937): Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II
(High, Wide, and Handsome)
Someday My Prince Will Come (1937): Frank Churchill and Larry Morey
(Snow White and the Seven Dwarves)
Love is Here to Stay (1938) George and Ira Gershwin
(The Goldwyn Follies)
At Last (1941): Harry Warren and Mack Gordon
(Sun Valley Serenade)
I’ll Remember April (1941): Gene de Paul, Patricia Johnson, and Don Raye
(Ride’ Em Cowboy)
Let’s Get Lost (1943): Jimmy McHugh and Frank Loesser
(Happy Go Lucky)
One for My Baby (and One More for the Road (1943): Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer
(The Sky’s the Limit)
The Boy Next Door (1944): Ralph Blane & Hugh Martin
(Meet Me in St. Louis)
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (1944): Ralph Blane & Hugh Martin
(Meet Me in St. Louis)
Like Someone in Love (1944): Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke
(Belle of the Yukon)
The More I See You (1945) Harry Warren and Mack Gordon
(Diamond Horseshoe)
Put the Blame on Mame (1946) Doris Fisher and Allan Roberts
(Gilda)
But Beautiful (1947): Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke
(The Road to Rio)
A Couple of Swells (1948): Irving Berlin
(Easter Parade)
Steppin’ Out With My Baby (1948): Irving Berlin
(Easter Parade)
That’s Entertainment (1953): Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz
(The Bandwagon)
SONGWRITING FOR THE MOVIES
Several great songwriters or songwriting teams did minimal or no writing for the movies, preferring to debut their work on the Broadway stage. As a result, there isn’t a single song from Burton Lane, Lerner & Loewe, Comden and Green, or Rodgers and Hart on my list, and only one song from Rodgers and Hammerstein II (Hammerstein himself, however, gets numerous mentions from his collaboration with other composers). Cole Porter was a bit more adventurous, with FOUR of his best-known songs represented.
George and Ira Gershwin finally succumbed to the charms of the West Coast in 1937 and ended up writing songs for three movies (“Shall We Dance,” “A Damsel in Distress,” and “The Goldwyn Follies” most of which have entered the Jazz canon. Ten years later, Ira took some old compositions by George and added lyrics to them. The result is the song score for the 1947 film “The Shocking Mrs. Pilgrim” (one of the songs in “The Goldwyn Follies”; “Loved Walked In” was also an old George composition given new life by Ira after his brother’s untimely death).
The majority of the great songwriters had a designated composer and a designated lyricist. However, Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin were unusual in that they both wrote the music and the lyrics to songs that were an essential part of both “Meet Me in St. Louis” and “Good News.” Doris Fisher and Allan Roberts seemed to have a similar relationship in the songs they wrote for “Gilda.”
Cole Porter and Irvin Berlin wrote BOTH the music and the lyrics to (almost all) of their songs, while Frank Loesser and Johnny Mercer also achieved this double whammy on a few of their best songs.
Irving Berlin tops the list with twenty-three songs, Harry Warren with twenty, and Harold Arlen and Jimmy Van Heusen with eighteen songs.
Many of Berlin’s greatest songs debuted in the classic Astaire-Rogers RKO movies of the 1930s
Warren pioneered writing songs directly for the movies at Warner Bros. in the early thirties (with his then-partner, lyricist Al Dubin).
Arlen, one of the greatest songwriters of Hollywood’s Golden Era, was the son of a cantor. He became the musical director and, with his lyricist Ted Kohler, the house songwriting team for Harlem’s famed Cotton Club during its peak years in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Moving to Hollywood, he wrote a string of classics for the movies with lyricists Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin, and Kohler, and with lyricist Yip Harburg, he composed his most lasting contribution to film, the soundtrack to “The Wizard of Oz.” It made Judy Garland a star, and she got to sing Arlen/Harburg’s Oscar-winning “Over the Rainbow,” the most excellent movie song ever written. Together with songwriters Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin, Arlen played a significant role, if not the central role, in creating the phenomenon that was Judy Garland.
With his lyricists, Johnny Burke and Sammy Cahn, Van Heusen played a massive part in creating the personas of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, respectively.
Composers George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Frank Churchill, and Jule Stein have a strong showing, while the contribution of such gifted lyricists as Ned Washington, Johnny Mercer, Paul Francis Webster, Mack Gordon, Yip Harburg, and Dorothy Fields is probably better appreciated in the companion article.
ASTAIRE – ROGERS
We cannot underestimate the influence of director Mark Sandrich and the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals at RKO in the 1930s. They started the ball rolling, introducing one Oscar-winning or Oscar-nominated song after another, including the very first Oscar-winner, “The Continental” by Con Conrad and Herb Magidson. They also introduced movie audiences to the genius of Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and George Gershwin.
If the RKO musicals reeked of class and sophistication, over at Warner Bros., it was a far grittier affair as pre-code guys and dames started to put on a show at every opportunity. Thanks to the talents of Harry Warren and his partner Al Dubin, the first songwriters to write songs exclusively for the silver screen, director Lloyd Bacon and the choreographer extraordinaire Busby Berkeley delivered the first great movie musical, “42nd Street,” in 1933. This was followed by “Gold Diggers of 1933” and “Gold Diggers of 1935,” among many others, until the decade’s end.
The Harold Arlen/Yip Harburg songs for “The Wizard of Oz,” including the all-time classic “Over the Rainbow,” are landmarks in Hollywood’s musical history.
Finally, the numerous classics that Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke wrote for Paramount’s Road Movies are a remarkable, often underappreciated, body of work.
Several famous songs associated with movies were
Never actually featured in the films to which they are linked.
The most famous example is the song “Laura” from the 1944 movie of the same name. David Raksin’s central theme was so popular that Johnny Mercer added lyrics, and a hit song was born. Mercer repeated the honor in 1964 when he wrote the lyrics for Johnny Mandel’s central theme for “The Americanization of Emily,” giving us the song “Emily.”
“Easy Living,” the song by Ralph Ranger and Leo Robin, was not in the movie “Easy Living.” After the film’s release, Robin added the lyrics to Ranger’s background score.
Victor Young (already represented here by three movie songs) had three of his main themes/instrumentals adapted to song by his favorite lyricists after the film’s release: “Stella by Starlight” from ” The Uninvited” (1944) (lyrics by Ned Washington), “When I Fall in Love” from “One Minute to Zero” (1952) (lyrics by Edward Heyman) and “Around the World” from “Around the World in 80 Days” (1956) with lyrics by Harold Adamson. All three became massive hits, and, like “Love Letters” and ” My Foolish Heart,” they have become a beloved part of the Great American Songbook.
Charlie Chaplin’s gorgeous and romantic incidental music for his 1936 movie “Modern Times” – mostly silent except for some ingenious sound effects and an orchestral score soundtrack – was an instant hit with audiences from the moment the film was released. However, it was not until 1954 that John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons added those lyrics, and the song “Smile” was born, which became an instant smash for Nat King Cole. Chaplin did go on to win the Oscar for Best Original Score of 1972 for “Limelight” as a result of two coincidences: The disqualification of Nino Rota’s Original Score for “The Godfather,” and the fact that 1972 marked the first screening of Chaplin’s 1954 film Limelight in Los Angeles. Back in ’54, the LA city council had refused to allow a screening of his penultimate movie because of the director’s perceived leftist leanings. Chaplin had already moved to Switzerland with his family and would not set foot in the US again until he received his Honorary Oscar in 1972.
WE THINK OF THEM AS MOVIE SONGS BUT THEY ARE NOT MOVIE SONGS WHY NOT? BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT WRITTEN SPECIFICALLY FOR THE MOVIE IN QUESTION. THEY WERE WRITTEN FOR THE BROADWAY STAGE OR AS A STAND-ALONE HIT RECORD.
DUE TO THEIR POPULARITY, THEY WERE INCLUDED IN THE FILM MONTHS TO YEARS AFTER THEIR ORIGINAL RELEASE AND COPYRIGHT.
One of the most iconic songs associated with movies is Herman Hupfeld’s “As Time Goes By,” which was effectively used when sung and played by Dooley Wilson in the Warner Bros. classic “Casablanca” (Michael Curtiz, 1942/1943). However, it is not originally a movie song at all. It was first written for the Broadway show “Everybody’s Welcome” in 1931, with Frances Williams introducing it. The song was brought back in “Casablanca,” where studio pianist Jean-Vincent Pommelier played Wilson’s piano accompaniment. The song’s melody was woven into Max Steiner’s famous score and used as a leitmotif throughout the film. The rest is Hollywood history.
The song “I’ll Be Seeing You” was composed by Sammy Fain with lyrics by Irving Kahal in 1938 and inserted into the Broadway musical “Right This Way,” which closed after fifteen performances. At the suggestion of the film’s producer, Dore Schary, the 1944 film’s title, “I’ll Be Seeing You,” was taken from this song. The song was included in the film’s soundtrack and became a huge hit when re-released.
A similar story concerns Frank Sinatra’s 1953 comeback smash “Young at Heart.” With music by Johnny Richards and lyrics by Carolyn Lee, the song was such a monumental hit that an untitled 1954 movie
