Melody For Two

This movie was designed as a vehicle for James Melton, who is now, unknown. At the time, Warners tried to make a star out of him - and had a few good songs from Harry and Al to make a go of it. Harry said that "of all the stars I worked with...he was my kind of singer, and it was a pleasure to write for him - you knew that he could sing anything you gave him and that it would be be done with skill and taste. I wish I could say that of all the people I worked with".

In this picture, the affable Melton appears as an angry and difficult bandleader, who argues with everyone he works with and objects to playing songs as they're arranged. Hardly an endearing role to audiences - Patricia Ellis was his leading lady and it's her job to straighten him out.

The most memorable song from this picture among others, is "September in the Rain" which Warren and Al had saved in their musical bag of tricks. The melody had been written two years before for "Stars over Broadway" and can be heard in the background of the picture. Dubin came up with the title, and his enduring concepts for the lyrics made this song one of the Warren/Dubin classics.

Patrica Ellis goes over a song with Harry Warren and Al Dubin

Harry, at the time in 1937 was busy writing for numerous pictures, and Leo Forbstein, head of the music department was always asking Harry to write him "a few bars of schmaltz" . Warren remembers that "Leo liked to have lots of music in pictures, and he always asked me to write tunes for love scenes. I seldom put titles on these pieces, and a lot of the time I never knew what happened to them. If I'd beem more business like, I should have, bit I didn't, and I could never refuse Leo. But by this time, I was like a dog chasing his tail, with so many songs going in so many pictures. "

Patrica Ellis