Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Glenn Miller, and other performers often basked in the sunlight, with bags of fan mail, write-ups and publicity in newspapers and magazines, and hoards of fans waiting every night for a coveted autograph, but what about the creators of these songs? All these talented performers could not put forth a note until someone had worked long hours, days, or even weeks to put a good song together. These songwriters often received little or no recognition, with the exception of a few composers. Disk jockeys rarely mentioned their names, they were rarely, if ever, mentioned in newspapers or magazines, and no one was clamoring for their autograph.

One such composer who deserved that kind of attention was Harry Warren (1893-1981). Numbers vary from source to source (most sources say 311 or 350), but my records show that he wrote more than 400 songs for close to 90 different movies from 1928 through 1981. Of those, 42 songs written between 1935 through 1950 placed in the top ten on the popular radio program, Your Hit Parade. His nearest competitor, the famous Irving Berlin, had only 33. Harry wrote in almost every conceivable music style, and quite successfully in most cases. He wrote waltzes, marches, tangos, love ballads, rumbas, beguines, sambas, blues, Dixieland, Italian love songs, lullabies, polkas, "hot" numbers, swing, ballads, novelty numbers, specialty numbers, dramatic pieces, country/western, pseudo-rock, classical piano solos, and even a Catholic mass. Harry's music made so many people famous, so the question is, why isn't he a household name like his contemporaries Berlin, Porter, Rodgers, and Gershwin? The answer, no one really knows.

In December 1918, Harry married Josephine Wensler and they had their first child, a son, Harry Jr. ("Sonny") shortly after. Harry continued to write songs, writing both words and music. Nobody wanted to publish his songs because his lyrics were not very good. In 1920, Harry got a big break. While playing piano one night in a Brooklyn saloon, two guys from the publishing firm Stark & Cowan came in. Harry tried out an early effort on them, one called "I Learned To Love You When I Learned My A-B-C's," another song that is likely to be gone forever. The two guys liked it and told Harry to come in the next week and play it for their boss, Ruby Cowan. Cowan didn't publish it, but did offer Harry a job as a song plugger (basically a guy who went around trying to get performers to sing that publisher's songs). Harry took a disliking to that line of work because it was not what he wanted to do: write songs.

Harry persisted in his writing and in 1922 finally came up with his first hit, "Rose of the Rio Grande," with lyrics by Edgar Leslie. From then on, a steady stream of Harry Warren songs were marketed. He had two hits in 1923, "Home In Pasadena" and "So This Is Venice," both introduced by Paul Whiteman. By early 1925, 10 Warren songs had been published, with about half of them becoming hits, not a bad record to start off! By this time, Harry's last child, a daughter, Joan "Cookie," was born. 1925 was a very productive year for Warren, and he scored big with "I Love My Baby (My Baby Loves Me)" and "Seminola." 1926 brought "Where Do You Work-a John?" and "In My Gondola." In 1927, a couple of show tunes emerged as well as some moderate hits, and in 1928 the very popular "Nagasaki" was born, among others.

By 1929, Harry Warren was the director of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), a position he held until 1932. 1929 was a busy year for Warren song-wise as well, and he wrote several additional hits with top lyric writers, including Gus Kahn and Kalmar & Ruby. With his record of hits, it's not surprising that in 1930 he was called on to write a movie score for "Spring Is Here" and a score for a Broadway show, "Sweet And Low." More song hits. In 1931 came two big Broadway shows, one with Fannie Brice, the other with Ed Wynn. Al Jolson even called on Harry to write one song to be interpolated into his show "The Wonder Bar."

1932 was a major turning point in Harry Warren's music career. This was the year he was called on to write a score with Al Dubin for a Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler picture entitled "Forty-Second Street." Needless to say, the movie was the grandfather of the Hollywood musical, with four splendid Busby Berkeley production numbers, all set around Warren and Dubin's snappy tunes. Harry wrote all those numbers for all those 1930's Gold Diggers movies, songs like "The Shadow Waltz," "We're In The Money," "Lullaby Of Broadway" (which won the second ever Academy Award for best song), and others. Warren and Dubin were the writers of the songs for nearly all of the Busby Berkeley production numbers in the 1930's, and Berkeley insisted on having Warren & Dubin supply songs for his production numbers even though some of the movies had scores by other writers, including Fain & Kahal, Dixon & Wrubel, and even Harburg & Arlen!

There were so many hits written in the 1930's by them, it's impossible to list all the titles here. His songs were performed by the likes of the afore-mentioned Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, in addition to Al Jolson, Ginger Rogers, Joan Blondell, Eddie Cantor, Ruth Etting, The Mills Brothers, Dolores Del Rio, James Melton, Joe E. Brown, Rosalind Marquis, Lola Lane, Helen Morgan, Kenny Baker, Ann Sheridan, Rudy Vallee, John Payne, and others. Harry was constantly kept busy from 1932 till 1939 at Warner Brothers Studios and wrote no less than 149 songs for movies. Harry also did some acting in two films during these years. He appeared with Al Dubin in both "Forty-Second Street" and "Go Into Your Dance" as a songwriter (with spoken lines). On a sad note, Harry's only son, Harry Jr., also known as "Sonny," died of complications from pneumonia in 1938, at the age of 19.