Who is Harold Arlen? Click here to find out!12/07/2004Who is Harold Arlen?
Even though he wrote over 400 songs from 1924 through 1976, including such classics as That Old Black Magic, Stormy Weather, It.s Only a Paper Moon, Get Happy and the entire score to The Wizard of Oz, many people do not know Harold Arlen. Yet most everyone would agree that Harold Arlen was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century.
Born Hyman Arluck on February 15, 1905 to Samuel and Celia Arluck of Buffalo, New York, Hyman began singing in the choir of the Pine Street synagogue, where his father was cantor, at the age of seven. He began studying the piano at age nine and even though the family listened to classical music and Italian opera, Hyman developed a passion for jazz. By the time he was 15 years old, he was the leader of his own band, The Snappy Trio, in which he sang, played the piano and wrote the musical arrangements. The next year the trio became a quintet . The Southbound Shufflers . performing locally in 1923 and 1924. By the time he was 20 years old, Hyman Arluck was a member of one of the most popular bands in the Buffalo area -The Buffalodians - playing college and society dates in downtown Buffalo.
The Buffalodians took their band on the road, playing Cleveland, Pittsburgh and eventually New York City. Hyman took an apartment on West 57th Street, and pursued his dream of becoming a singer. Composing really didn.t interest him, but he considered it a means to an end, to make money and further his singing career. In 1926, he collaborated with Dick George and composed Minor Gaff (Blues Fantasy), his first published piece of music. But he used the name Harold Arluck. Still unhappy with his name, shortly thereafter he decided to modify his mother.s family name . Orlin . into Arlen, and forever after has been known to the world as Harold Arlen.
By 1929, Harold Arlen had moved away from his dream of being a singer and was now a full-fledged composer. In the late 20.s and early 30.s, the place to be in New York City was The Cotton Club in Harlem. Teamed with lyricist Ted Koehler, they joined the enormous talents of Cab Calloway, Ethel Waters and Duke Ellington, writing music for the Club from 1930 to 1934, producing two shows a year. Some of the songs written in those years were instant hits. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, I Love a Parade, I.ve Got the World on a String, and Stormy Weather are today considered classics of American music.
In 1933 Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler were summoned to Hollywood to work on their first film assignment, Let.s Fall in Love, also the name of the hit song from the movie. They returned to New York the following year and continued at The Cotton Club. While writing for The Cotton Club, Harold collaborated with other lyricists composing songs for Broadway shows. Jack Yellen, Yip Harburg and Billy Rose all began their long association with Harold during this time.
In 1934 together with Yip Harburg and Ira Gershwin, Harold worked on the score to Life Begins at 8:40, produced on Broadway by the Shuberts. In 1935 he returned to California to work on Strike Me Pink starring Eddie Cantor and Ethel Merman. Upon finishing that film, he partnered with Yip Harburg again and wrote Last Night When We Were Young. Then they went on to write three movie musicals for Warner Brothers.
The movie that became the highlight of their careers was The Wizard of Oz, produced in 1939 by MGM. The Oscar-winning song Over the Rainbow is still a sensation: in 2000, it was recognized as the Number One Song of the 20th Century.
In 1941 Harold teamed with Johnny Mercer to score a Warner Brothers movie entitled Hot Nocturne. One of the songs they created was so sensational that it became the film title, Blues in the Night. In 1942 the two men moved to Paramount studios to write the music for the all-star musical Star Spangled Rhythm, which featured That Old Black Magic. RKO studios was their next job in 1943, scoring the Fred Astaire film The Sky.s the Limit. Two of the songs became huge hits, My Shining Hour and One for My Baby (And One More for the Road), which Astaire called one of the best pieces of music ever written for him.
By 1952 Harold was reunited with his old friend Ira Gershwin, to score the film A Star is Born, which was a comeback vehicle for Judy Garland. The Man That Got Away became a signature song for Judy for the rest of her career. The Arlen-Gershwin collaboration continued for The Country Girl, starring Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly. Next Harold worked with Truman Capote on House of Flowers, starring Diahann Carroll and Pearl Bailey. The score received the Critics. Award as the best for 1954.
Harold collaborated with Yip Harburg again in 1956 on a musical entitled Jamaica. He asked his old friend from The Cotton Club days, Lena Horne, to star in the show. While making an appearance on The Ed Sullivan show, Lena announced that she would be appearing in a new Harold Arlen-Yip Harburg musical, and in a few weeks the advance ticket sales reached nearly one million dollars!
Harold Arlen wrote over 50 songs between 1961 and 1976, but his latter years were filled with sorrow from the loss of his wife Anya Taranda in March of 1970. He withdrew from public life and on April 23, 1986, Harold Arlen passed away. He was 81 years old. But fortunately for us, his music will live on forever.
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