Harry Warren | |
|---|---|
 Warren promoting songs onTin Pan Alley, 1920 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | Salvatore Antonio Guaragna (1893-12-24)December 24, 1893 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | September 22, 1981(1981-09-22) (aged 87) Los Angeles,California, U.S. |
| Genres | Popular music |
| Occupation | Composer |
| Instrument | Piano |
Harry Warren (bornSalvatore Antonio Guaragna; December 24, 1893 – September 22, 1981)[1] was an American composer and the first major American songwriter to write primarily for film. He was nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Original Song eleven times and won threeOscars for composing "Lullaby of Broadway", "You'll Never Know" and "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe". He wrote the music for the first blockbuster film musical,42nd Street, choreographed byBusby Berkeley, with whom he would collaborate on many musical films.
Over a career spanning six decades, Warren wrote more than 800 songs. Other well known Warren hits included "I Only Have Eyes for You", "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby", "Jeepers Creepers", "The Gold Diggers' Song (We're in the Money)", "That's Amore", "There Will Never Be Another You", "The More I See You", "At Last" and "Chattanooga Choo Choo" (the last of which was the firstgold record in history). Warren was one of America's most prolific film composers, and his songs have been featured in over 300 films.
Warren was born Salvatore Antonio Guaragna, one of eleven children of Italian immigrants Antonio (a bootmaker) and Rachel De Luca Guaragna, and grew up inBrooklyn, New York. His father changed the family name to Warren when Harry was a child. Although his parents could not afford music lessons, Warren had an early interest in music and taught himself to play his father'saccordion. He also sang in the church choir and learned to play the drums. He began to play the drums professionally by age 14 and dropped out of high school at 16 to play with his godfather's band in a traveling carnival. Soon he taught himself to play the piano and by 1915, he was working at theVitagraph Motion Picture Studios, where he did a variety of administrative jobs, such as props man, and also played mood music on the piano for the actors, acted in bit parts and eventually was an assistant director. He also played the piano in cafés and silent-movie houses. In 1918 he joined theU.S. Navy, where he began writing songs.[2][3]
Warren wrote over 800 songs between 1918 and 1981, publishing over 500 of them.[4][5] They were written mainly for 56 feature films or were used in other films that used Warren's newly written or existing songs.[2] His songs eventually appeared in over 300 films and 112 ofWarner Bros.Looney Tunes andMerrie Melodies cartoons.[6] 42 of his songs were on the top ten list of the radio program "Your Hit Parade", a measure of a song's popularity. 21 of these reached number 1 on Your Hit Parade.[5] "You'll Never Know" appeared 24 times.[7] His song "I Only Have Eyes for You" is listed in the list of the 25 most-performed songs of the 20th Century, as compiled by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).[8] Warren was the director of ASCAP from 1929 to 1932.[3]
He collaborated on some of his most famous songs with lyricistsAl Dubin,Billy Rose,Mack Gordon,Leo Robin,Ira Gershwin andJohnny Mercer. In 1942 the Gordon-Warren song "Chattanooga Choo-Choo", as performed by theGlenn Miller Orchestra, became the firstgold record in history. It was No.1 for nine weeks on theBillboard pop singles chart in 1941–1942, selling 1.2 million copies.[9] Among his biggest hits were "There Will Never Be Another You", "I Only Have Eyes for You", "Forty-Second Street", "The Gold Diggers' Song (We're in the Money)", "Lullaby of Broadway", "Serenade In Blue", "At Last", "Jeepers Creepers", "You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me", "That's Amore", and "Young and Healthy".[2]
Warren's first hit song was "Rose of the Rio Grande" (1922), with lyrics byEdgar Leslie.[10] He wrote a succession of hit songs in the 1920s, including "I Love My Baby (My Baby Loves Me)" and "Seminola" in 1925, "Where Do You Work-a John?" and "In My Gondola" in 1926 and "Nagasaki" in 1928. In 1930, he composed the music for the song "Cheerful Little Earful" for theBilly RoseBroadwayrevue,Sweet and Low, and composed the music, with lyrics by Mort Dixon and Joe Young, for theEd Wynn Broadway revueThe Laugh Parade in 1931.[2]
He started working forWarner Brothers in 1932, paired with Dubin to write the score for the first blockbuster film musical,42nd Street, and continued to work there for six years, writing the scores for 32 more musicals.[6] He worked for20th Century Fox starting in 1940, writing with Mack Gordon.[11] He moved toMGM starting in 1944, writing formusical films such asThe Harvey Girls andThe Barkleys of Broadway, many starringFred Astaire. He later worked forParamount, starting in the early 1950s, writing for theBing Crosby andJane Wyman movieJust for You and theMartin and Lewis movieThe Caddy, the latter containing the hit song "That's Amore". He continued to write songs for several moreJerry Lewis comedies.[2]
Warren is particularly remembered for writing scores for thefilms ofBusby Berkeley; they worked together on 18 films. His "uptempo songs are as memorable as Berkeley's choreography, as [sic] for the same reason: they capture, in a few snazzy notes, the vigorous frivolity of the Jazz Age."[12]
Warren won theAcademy Award for Best Song three times, collaborating with three different lyricists: "Lullaby of Broadway" with Al Dubin in 1935, "You'll Never Know" with Mack Gordon in 1943, and "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" with Johnny Mercer in 1946. He was nominated for eleven Oscars.[2]
In 1955, Warren wrote "The Legend of Wyatt Earp", which was used in theABC/Desilu Studiostelevision series,The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. He also wrote the opening theme, "Hey, Marty" (lyrics byPaddy Chayefsky), for the filmMarty, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1955.[13] The last musical score that Warren composed specifically for Broadway wasShangri-La, a disastrous 1956 adaptation ofJames Hilton'sLost Horizon, which ran for only 21 performances. In 1957, he received his last Academy Award nomination for the song "An Affair to Remember". He continued to write songs for movies throughout the 1960s and 1970s but never again achieved the fame that he had enjoyed earlier. His last movie score was forManhattan Melody, in 1980, but the film was never produced.[3]
Warren composed a Mass, with Latin text, in 1962. This was performed a decade later atLoyola Marymount University, but it has yet to be recorded commercially.[14] He also wrote nearly three dozen short piano vignettes. The sheet music was first published by Warren's Four Jays Music Co.[15] A dozen of these were released on a 1975 album titledHarry Warren's Piano Vignettes, played by Hugh Delain.[16] Several pianists have recorded the vignettes, including Warren himself.[17]
Warren married Josephine Wensler in 1917. They had a son, Harry Jr. (1919–1938), and a daughter, Joan (b. 1925). His wife died in 1993.
Warren died on September 22, 1981, inLos Angeles.[1] He is interred in theWestwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. The plaque bearing Warren's epitaph displays the first few notes of "You'll Never Know".[18]
According toWilfrid Sheed, quoted inTime magazine: "By silent consensus, the king of this army of unknown soldiers, the Hollywood incognitos, was Harry Warren, who had more songs on the Hit Parade than Berlin himself and who would win the contest hands down if enough people have heard of him."[12]William Zinsser noted: "The familiarity of Harry Warren's songs is matched by the anonymity of the man ... he is the invisible man, his career a prime example of the oblivion that cloaked so many writers who cranked out good songs for bad movies."[11] At least three episodes of theLawrence Welk Show were devoted entirely to Warren's music: Season 18, Episode 5, October 7, 1972;[19] Season 25, Episode 10, November 24, 1979;[20] and Season 27, Episode 17, January 2, 1982[21]Susannah McCorkle's debut album wasThe Music of Harry Warren (1976).
In 1980, producerDavid Merrick and directorGower Champion adapted the 1933 film42nd Street into aBroadway musical that won theTony Award for Best Musical in 1981, ran for 3,486 performances and has had several major revivals.[22] The score incorporated songs by Warren and Dubin from various movie musicals, including42nd Street,Dames,Go Into Your Dance,Gold Diggers of 1933, andGold Diggers of 1935.[23]
A theatre inGravesend, Brooklyn, New York, the Harry Warren Theatre, was named for Warren in 1982.[24][25]
Music by Warren, unless noted:
In his bookAmerican Popular Song, Alec Wilder notes that Warren "wasn't in the category as the best theater writers, but he certainly was among the foremost pop song writers." He discusses songs he likes: "Would You Like to Take a Walk?" (1930, withMort Dixon andBilly Rose forSweet & Low), "I Found a Million Dollar Baby (in a Five and Ten Cent Store)" (1931, with Dixon and Rose forCrazy Quilt), "You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me" (1932), "Summer Night" (1936), "There Will Never Be Another You" (1942), "Serenade in Blue" (1942), "At Last" (1942), "Jeepers Creepers" (1938), and "The More I See You" (1945).[34]
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