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Harold Arlen (born Hyman Arluck; February 15, 1905 – April 23, 1986) was an American composer of popular music, who composed over 500 songs, a number of which have become known worldwide. In addition to composing the songs for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz (lyrics by Yip Harburg), including "Over the Rainbow", which won him the Oscar for Best Original Song, he was nominated as composer for 8 other Oscar awards. Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the Great American Songbook. "Over the Rainbow" was voted the 20th century's No. 1 song by the RIAA and the NEA.
In 1929, Arlen composed his first well-known song: "Get Happy" (with lyrics by Ted Koehler) and subsequently signed a yearlong song-writing contract with the George and Arthur Piantadosi firm. The same year, he held a singing and acting gig as Cokey Joe in the musical The Great Day. Throughout the early and mid-1930s, Arlen and Koehler wrote shows for the Cotton Club, a popular Harlem night club, as well as for Broadway theatre musicals and Hollywood films. Arlen and Koehler's partnership resulted in a number of hit songs, including the familiar standards "Let's Fall in Love" and "Stormy Weather". For their last show at the Cotton Club Parade in 1934, he and Ted Koehler wrote "Ill Wind (You're Blowin' Me No Good)", with lyrics by Koehler and sung by Adelaide Hall Arlen continued to perform as a pianist and vocalist with some success, most notably on records with Leo Reisman's society dance orchestra.
In the mid-1930s, Arlen married, and spent increasing time in California, writing for movie musicals. It was at this time that he began working with lyricist Yip Harburg. He signed with Samuel Goldwyn in 1935 to write songs for the film Strike Me Pink. In 1938, the team was hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to compose songs for The Wizard of Oz, the most famous of which is "Over the Rainbow", for which they won the Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song. They also wrote "Down with Love" (featured in the 1937 Broadway show Hooray for What!), "Lydia the Tattooed Lady", for Groucho Marx in At the Circus in 1939, and "Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe", for Ethel Waters in the 1943 movie Cabin in the Sky. Arlen was a longtime friend and one-time roommate of actor Ray Bolger, who starred in The Wizard of Oz.
In the 1940s, he teamed up with lyricist Johnny Mercer, and continued to write hit songs like "Blues in the Night", "Out of this World", "That Old Black Magic", "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive", "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home", "Come Rain or Come Shine" and "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)". In 1949, he collaborated with Ralph Blane to write the score for My Blue Heaven. The following year, he and Mercer worked on the film The Petty Girl, out of which came the song "Fancy Free". He worked with Dorothy Fields on the 1952 film The Farmer Takes a Wife. Arlen composed two of the defining songs of Judy Garland's career: "Over the Rainbow" and "The Man That Got Away", the last written for the 1954 version of the film A Star Is Born. At her famous 1961 Carnegie Hall concert, after finishing a set of his songs, Garland acknowledged Arlen in the audience and invited him to receive an ovation.
In 1962, he wrote the score for the animated musical Gay Purr-ee, with lyrics by Yip Harburg. Arlen recorded his debut album as a vocalist, Harold Sings Arlen (With Friend), in 1966. Barbra Streisand accompanied him on two songs. The theme song for the ABC sitcom Paper Moon is based on the song of that title, written by Arlen and Harburg in 1932. The series was based on a 1973 Peter Bogdanovich film of the same name, which used the same song. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1979.
Arlen never remarried. He died of cancer on April 23, 1986, at his Manhattan apartment at the age of eighty-one. Arlen is buried next to his wife at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. After Arlen's death, Irving Berlin summed up his life at a tribute, saying: "He wasn't as well known as some of us, but he was a better songwriter than most of us and he will be missed by all of us."
Shortly before his death, Arlen adopted his own nephew, Samuel, the 22-year-old adult son of his brother Julius "Jerry" Arluck; his estate would have an heir in order to extend his copyright. Known as Samuel Arlen, he is a musician in his own right, as both a saxophonist as well as a music publisher; his control extends to the company that owns the rights to the Arlen catalog.
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