Arlen Dies; Composer of ‘Over the Rainbow’

Hymen Arluck, a cantor’s son who grew up to become Harold Arlen, the composer who took the world “Over the Rainbow,” died Wednesday at his home in New York City

Arlen, 81, who had suffered from cancer, died at his Manhattan home shortly after 4 p.m., and his body was found in bed by his son, Sam, a police spokesman said.

His death leaves Irving Berlin as the sole survivor of an era of melodic innocence in which boys always got the girls of their choice and generations of Dorothys found their way home from the perplexing Land of Oz.

One of the most prolific tunesmiths of his day, at his death he had spun the melodies for 102 songs, 25 motion pictures, 10 Broadway shows and 3 instrumental suites.

His songs were a lexicon of the United States in all her disparate moods, ranging from “Ac-Cen-Tchu-Ate the Positive” to “Stormy Weather” and “Blues in the Night.”

Countless millions hummed his melodic inspirations into the ears of their dance partners in speak-easies, whistled them as they waited in Depression-era bread lines or crooned them over the sounds battleships made as they plied wartime seas.

He was the first of the white composers to write for black audiences and his prodigious output places him second (behind only Berlin) in the number of credits listed in the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Biographical Dictionary.

He gave Pearl Bailey her first big hit with “Legalize My Name,” made a household word of Ethel Waters with “Stormy Weather,” and catapulted a young Judy Garland to stardom with the songs from “The Wizard of Oz,” winning his only Academy Award for “Over the Rainbow.”

It was a career that involved a great deal of skill, but initial luck. It could have been viewed as predictable after that single afternoon in the 1920s when he was working as an accompanist for Vincent Youmans and the orchestra leader heard him “vamping” at the piano before a rehearsal.

“Why don’t you make a song out of that?” Youmans inquired.

The result was “Get Happy,” a song that became the biggest hit of “9:15 Revue,” a 1930 Broadway musical.

George Gershwin, with his brother, Ira, a neighbor of Arlen when they were boys, called it “The most exciting finale I’ve ever heard.”

The finale proved the beginning.

Before “Get Happy,” Arlen had labored in the musical vineyards of his day, starting when he was only 7 and singing in the choir of his father’s synagogue in his native Buffalo, N.Y. He remembered having to stand on a chair to be seen and heard. He also began taking piano lessons in his seventh year and at 15 was playing professionally in the few Buffalo cafes offering entertainment.

Visits New York

He progressed to playing piano with the “Snappy Trio” on lake boats, a group he formed with a young violinist and drummer. Shortly, the group doubled in number and became Hymen Arluck’s “Yankee Six” (later the Southland Shufflers.) In 1924 he made his first journey to New York City and while there heard Miss Waters, for whom he would later write hits.

By 1928 he was believed to have changed his name to Harold Arlen and was working as pianist and arranger for Arnold Johnson’s Orchestra, the pit band in George White’s annual “Scandals.” Youmans lured him away and “Get Happy” placed him in demand.

In 1930, he crossed the then-tenuous color line and with Ted Koehler collaborated on a series of songs for Harlem’s Cotton Club revues (where Lena Horne was struggling to break out of the chorus.) Cab Calloway sang his “I’ve Got the World on a String” and “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” Other songs he wrote for black singers sporadically over the next five years included “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues,” “Minnie the Moocher’s Wedding Day,” and, for Miss Waters, “Stormy Weather.”

In 1933, Arlen made his first foray into films with “It’s Only a Paper Moon” for Paramount’s “Take a Chance” and that initial screen success led to a second, the title song for “Let’s Fall in Love,” for Columbia.

Behind him was a short vaudeville career in which he toured with Lou Holtz and Lyda Roberti and several mostly now forgotten songs that Earl Carroll had commissioned for his “Vanities.”

Hits the Rails

He became a frequent sight on the nation’s rail system, leaving Broadway to write movie scores for “Strike Me Pink,” “The Singing Kid,” “Gold Diggers of 1937” and “Artists and Models.” He would stay a few months, complaining that songwriters were usually an afterthought for producers, and then return to New York to compose for “The Great Magoo,” (which featured Arlen’s evergreen “If You Believe in Me”) or “Hooray for What,” which starred Ed Wynn.

By the mid 1930s he was collaborating regularly in New York with Ira Gershwin and E.Y. (Yip) Harburg. One 1934 effort featured Ray Bolger warbling “Let’s Take a Walk Around the Block” in “Life Begins at 8:40.”

Yarburg eventually would be the lyricist that put words into the mouths of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man as they trod the yellow brick road to seek favors from Oz’s wizard.

And although “Over the Rainbow” was voted the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ favorite song of 1939, it actually was accepted and rejected for the film three times before making the final cut.

Arlen later said the melody came to him after hearing automobile horns in heavy traffic.

“Blues in the Night” was an early collaboration with Johnny Mercer and it was written as the title song for the 1941 film starring Priscilla Lane, Lloyd Nolan and Jack Carson as the nucleus of a band of jazz Gypsies. It also featured another Arlen classic, “This Time the Dream’s on Me.”

In 1942 he and Mercer teamed again, this time on the film “Star Spangled Rhythm,” a favored wartime musical that featured most of the singing and acting talent on the Paramount lot. Its stars included Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Fred MacMurray, Susan Hayward, Betty Hutton and even Cecil B. de Mille, the legendary director. Among the Arlen-Mercer contributions was a song that years later launched the career of a singer who wasn’t even in the picture--Billy Daniels. The song? “That Old Black Magic.”

The War Years

Arlen spent much of World War II in Hollywood, writing “One for My Baby” and “My Shining Hour” in 1943’s “The Sky’s the Limit,” which featured Fred Astaire.

That year proved a banner one for Arlen. With Mercer he penned “Ac-Cen-Tchu-Ate the Positive” a duet performed by Bing Crosby and Sonny Tufts in “Here Come the Waves” while with Harburg he turned back the clock to the days of his black revues and wrote the score for “Cabin in the Sky,” a tour de force for Miss Waters and her teary rendition of “Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe.”

The war wound down and Broadway was winding up. Arlen dashed off film scores for “Up in Arms” and “Out of This World,” then returned to New York for “Bloomer Girl” and its hit song, “T’morra, T’morra.” Next was another black musical, “St. Louis Woman” where a young Pearl Bailey captivated audiences with “Legalize My Name.” But he didn’t stay long that time, coming back to Hollywood to score “Casbah” in which Tony Martin declared “For Every Man There’s a Woman.” Martin’s, of course, was Yvonne de Carlo.

In 1954 Warner Bros. decided to remake the 17-year-old “A Star Is Born,” this time with Judy Garland in the title role. Again Arlen gave her superlative songs, “The Man That Got Away” and “Born in a Trunk.”

When Arlen moved “permanently” to Hollywood in 1943 he opined that “California agrees with me. . . .” In 1955, when he and his wife, the former Earl Carroll showgirl Anya Taranda, returned to New York, he said he was “convinced that New York and the theater are where I belong.”

Last Productive Years

His work in the 1950s and early ‘60s, the last of his truly productive years, reflected that ambivalence for he continued the cross-country commute, scoring “The Country Girl” with Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly and “Gay Purr-ee,” an animated feature cartoon about cats in which Miss Garland could be heard along with Robert Goulet and Hermione Gingold. In that same period he wrote songs for “Jamaica” and “Saratoga” on Broadway and then adapted many of his earlier triumphs for “The Harold Arlen Songbook” which opened in 1967.

He settled permanently in New York after the demise of the film musical but his music continued to be performed on stages across America as recently as 1984 when “Get Happy,” a reprise of 50 of his most enduring melodies, toured the Equity Waiver circuit.

For the last several years his health had confined him to his New York home where he visited occasionally with the precious few Tin Pan Alley survivors who, with Harold Arlen, had crafted forgotten rainbows for the rest of us.

Funeral services will be held Friday with burial at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, N.Y.