THE MELODY MAN

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4347, 11 January 1938, Page 5

THE MELODY MAN

MONEY IN SONG-WRITiNG ROMANTIC SUCCESSES How fortune-spinning song writers make the world whistle cheerily though the tune may have been written in drab surroundings is told by Michael Killanin in the ‘Daily Mail.’ Referring to the death of George Gershwin, the young genius whose “ Rhapsody in Blue ” heralded a new art form in modern music, Mr Killanin remarks that It is not possible to estimate the money he made but £15,000 a song is not wide of the mark. It was Gershwin’s stage musical shows that first put Fred Astaire on the international map. By fate’s curious trick it was Gershwin who wrote the score of the latest Astaire-Rogers film, ‘Shall We Dance?” It was to be his musical farewell.

Discussing Irving Berlin, the pioneer of jazz music, and one of the few composers who consistently keeps up the standard of his output, the writer says he must have made £IOO,OOO with his ‘‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” and 10 times as much again with the swiftsucceeding waltz songs, such as “Always” and “What’ll I do?” which have revived sentimental memories in the most hard-bitten among us. The fashionable dilettante, Cole Porter, he states, is said to have made £IOOO a week with his “Night and Day,” and the regrets of the ill-fated Miss Otis are still in constant circulation.

American top-line composers are, he notes, on an average older than their British confreres. Jerome Kern, who is 52, Irving Berlin, who is 49, Cole Porter, who is 45, and Ray Henderson, who is 42, are all not too old at 40. But they invaded “ Tin Pan Alley ” when they should by rights have been at their school books.

Jerome Kern, whose “Show Boat” is now a classic, first began his composing when a young man in England. Since 1919 he has written the music for 20 money-making shows and film after film, Mr Killanin says. Perhaps the most romantic figure in the jazz world now alive is Irving Berlin. He arrived in New York without a cent in his pocket, an emigrant from Russia. He frequented cheap restaurants in Chinatown, and to take his mind off a drab future scribbled down tunes on bits of paper. The tide turned and promptly overwhelmed him. He laid siege to the heart of a rich young society leader, Elin Mackay, and the conquest appeared hopeless. So he wrote song after song to his lady (who will ever forget “How Deep is the Ocean ”?) . . . and his melody won the lay. To-day the Irving Berlins are one of the happiest and most popular couples in America. Mr Killanin declares that the most successful song-writing team is that of the fIOOO-a-week Hollywood friends, Rodgers and Hart. They roomed together at college, and are inseparable. Their beautiful “Heart Stood Still” wrung from Mr Cochran the largest sum he has ever paid for one song. Another song writer to whom one hums is Ray Henderson, whose “ Sonny Boy ” and “ Birth of the Blues ” have been “ murdered ” in every language under the sun. The top British writers are of younger vintage, he states, the oldest being Ivor Novello, who made a fortune of £12,000 with “Keep the Home Fires Burning” and has never looked back. Now Coward and Novello run a neck-to-neck financial race, but Coward has always “Bitter Sweet” up his sleeve to keep him from starvation. Novello and Coward both act— on stage and in films. Both write songs —and plays. Coward is now 38 years old, and will be haunted for the rest of his life by the strains of his “I’ll See You Again” and “A Room With a View. ”