Product Code Database
Clifford Grey (5 January 1887 – 25 September 1941) was an English songwriter, librettist and screenwriter. His birth name was Percival Davis, and he was also known as Clifford Gray.
Grey contributed prolifically to dozens of West End and Broadway theatre shows, for the period from the First World War to the Second World War, as librettist and lyricist for composers including Ivor Novello, Jerome Kern, Howard Talbot, Ivan Caryll and George Gershwin. Among his best-remembered songs are two from early in his career, in 1916: "If You Were the Only Girl (In the World)" and "Another Little Drink Wouldn't Do Us Any Harm". His later hits include "Got a Date with an Angel" and "Spread a Little Happiness". He also wrote lyrics and screenplays for dozens of films released from 1929 to 1941, and they were used in films released posthumously.
For 35 years after 1979 it was widely believed that Grey secretly competed as an American bobsleigher, under the name Clifford "Tippy" Gray, in two Winter Olympics, in 1928 and 1932, winning gold medals, but it was finally shown that the sportsman was a different person.
In 1916 Grey had his big breakthrough as a writer, collaborating with the American composer Nat Ayer on The Bing Boys Are Here, a long-running revue that opened in London in April, and contained two of Grey's early successes, "If You Were the Only Girl (In the World)" and "Another Little Drink Wouldn't Do Us Any Harm". He collaborated with Ayer on Pell-Mell, The Bing Girls Are There, The Other Bing Boys, The Bing Brothers on Broadway, and Yes, Uncle! and with Herman Finck in Hallo, America!, Ivor Novello and Jerome Kern in Theodore & Co, Howard Talbot and Novello in Who's Hooper?, Novello in Arlette (1917) and Ivan Caryll in Kissing Time. "Grey, Clifford", Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Oxford University Press, 11 July 2006, Oxford Music Online, accessed 28 August 2010. On the last show he collaborated with P.G. Wodehouse,Jason, p, 82 who was privately lukewarm about Grey's talent, regarding him as a specialist in adapting other people's work rather than as an original talent.
The introduction of talking pictures attracted Grey to Hollywood. He collaborated with Victor Schertzinger on the 1929 Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald film, The Love Parade, and with Oscar Straus on The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), and contributed to films with a range of stars from Ramon Novarro to Lawrence Tibbett to Marion Davies. His songs and lyrics from shows were used in many films, and he wrote screenplays and lyrics for fourteen new Hollywood films between 1929 and 1931, including The Vagabond Lover (1929), In Gay Madrid (1930) and The Smiling Lieutenant (1931). After his death Grey's songs continued to be used in films and television productions. His best known song, "If You Were the Only Girl (in the World)", appeared in such films as Lilacs in the Spring (1954), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and The Cat's Meow (2001), and some films, such as Hit the Deck (1955), were adaptations of his shows. In 1929, he returned temporarily to London, where he collaborated with Vivian Ellis on the musical Mr Cinders, which had a long West End run and featured one of Grey's best-remembered songs, "Spread a Little Happiness".
Throughout the decade Grey had shows running in the West End, written in collaboration with previous collaborators and new ones including Oscar Levant, Johnny Green and Noel Gay. Grey wrote more than 3,000 songs.Daniels, Robert L. (31 July 2006). "Jazz in July – Twelve Hands, Two Pianos, One Night", Daily Variety (New York, N.Y., Reed Business Information) 31 July 2006, pp. 7–8
When the Second World War began, Grey joined the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), which took shows round the country and overseas to provide relief for serving members of the armed forces. In 1941 he was presenting a concert party in Ipswich, Suffolk, when the town was heavily bombed. Grey died two days later, aged 54, as a result of a heart attack, brought on by the bombing, and exacerbated by asthma. He is buried in Ipswich Old Cemetery.Wallenchinsky, pp. 559–60 "Clifford Grey, 54, English Lyricist; Wrote Words for Hit the Deck and The Three Musketeers Tunes – Dies in Ipswich", The New York Times, 27 September 1941, p. 17
There were a few who did not accept that "Tippi" Gray was the same person as Clifford Grey the writer. The Olympic historian David Wallechinsky was one, and John Cross, a researcher from Bowdoin College, was another.
West End, British films and last years
Returning to England in 1932, although apparently spending time in California, Grey concentrated thereafter on the West End stage and British films. His screenplay for Rome Express (1932), a spy story, was "extremely popular in its day and virtually created a subgenre". He wrote more than twenty screenplays for British films, usually for the popular comedians of the day, but also including My Song Goes Round the World (1934), Mimi (1935), an adaptation of La Bohème, for Gertrude Lawrence and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Yes, Madam? (1940).
Olympian bobsleigher myth
After an article written in 1979 by an American journalist, Tim Clark, in Yankee Magazine, it was believed for more than three decades that Grey had competed, secretly, for the US Olympic bobsleigh team in 1928 and 1932 under the name Clifford "Tippy" (or "Tippi") Gray. Many news sources and biographers accepted this idea, based on circumstantial evidence that Clark had found. The evidence also persuaded Grey's daughters that their late father was not only the peripatetic writer that they remembered, but also a secret world-class sportsman who had been too modest to boast of his Olympic success. The press thereafter widely reported that Grey the librettist had also won a gold medal in the five-man bobsleigh race at the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, another at the following Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, this time in the four-man event, and a bronze medal in the four-man race at the 1937 FIBT World Championships in St. Moritz.Stewart, Graham. "With a song – and a bobsleigh – in his heart", The Times, 11 February 2006 In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography the historian James Ross Moore concluded that during Grey's New York years:
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> "Clifford Barton 'Cliff' Gray", SR/Olympics, Sports Reference LLC, accessed 2 November 2012 Finally, around 2013, Andy Bull, a sportswriter for The Guardian, was writing a book about the 1932 gold medal-winning bobsleigh team that was published in 2015 under the title Speed Kings.Bull, Andy. Speed Kings, Bantam Press (2015) Although Bull had earlier accepted the story, as he looked closer, he became suspicious. He found an interview with "Tippy" Gray from 1948 in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, seven years after Grey's death. Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9 March 1948, p. 11 "Tippy" Gray, the Olympic champion, died in April 1968 in San Diego, California. Bull wrote:
Musicals
Films
Sources that confused Grey with the bobsledder Gray stated that he acted in a dozen silent films from 1914 to 1922, but this was Gray, not Grey, the lyricist. Grey's lyrics, songs or screenplays were used in nearly 60 talking films: "Clifford Grey", British Film Institute, accessed 2 November 2015
Notes, references and sources
Notes
Sources
External links
Categories: 1887 Births, 1941 Deaths, 20th-century English Male Actors, English Film Score Composers, English Male Film Score Composers, English Lyricists, English Male Film Actors, English Male Silent Film Actors, English Male Screenwriters, English Male Songwriters, People Educated At King Edward Vi Camp Hill School For Boys, Male Actors From Birmingham, West Midlands, English Expatriate Male Actors In The United States, 20th-century English Screenwriters, 20th-century English Male Writers, 20th-century English Male Musicians, Broadway Composers And Lyricists
|
|
