Bernice Petkere; Composer Wrote ‘Starlight’

Bernice Petkere, a prolific composer known as “the Queen of Tin Pan Alley” in the 1930s, has died at the age of 98.

Petkere, whose first song, “Starlight,” was recorded by Bing Crosby, died Friday of heart failure at Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles.

“Am I retired?” the feisty nonagenarian wrote Times syndicated columnist Liz Smith six years ago after one of her durable melodies, “Close Your Eyes,” had popped up once again in a New York celebrity tribute. “Hell no!”

That song, especially memorable for its interplay between major and minor chords, became the title and first track on a popular CD celebrating female jazz composers from Petkere to Billie Holiday and Sarah Hannah Sheppard.

Born in Chicago to Canadian parents, Petkere broke into vaudeville as a singing 5-year-old in a children’s duo billed as “Baby Dolls.”

She was later trained in voice at the Henshaw Conservatory of Music. Along the way, she taught herself to play piano and in her teens landed a job as pianist for the New York music publishing firm Waterson, Berlin & Snyder.

In a Manhattan jazz bar in 1931, she scribbled the notes to a tune that she was humming on the back of her menu.

That became “Starlight,” which Crosby recorded and composer Irving Berlin published, begging for more.

Petkere, often collaborating with such lyricists as Joseph Young, Marty Symes and Walter G. Samuels, delivered “Close Your Eyes,” “By a Rippling Stream,” “A Mile a Minute,” “Happy Little Farmer,” “Our Love,” “Oh, Moon,” “Half a Mile Away From Home,” “Lullaby of the Leaves,” “My River Home,” “Stay Out of My Dreams,” “Did You Mean What You Said Last Night” and “Dancing Butterfly.”

In addition to Crosby, such singers as Kate Smith, Tony Bennett and Nancy Wilson recorded her songs over the years.

In the jazz-conscious 1930s, when Petkere lived a private life with first husband Eddie Conne at New York’s Hotel Pierre, she once received a treasured get-well card from Berlin, accompanied by “dozens of red roses” and a fan letter addressed simply to “Bernice Petkere, Queen of Tin Pan Alley, New York.”

Later married to CBS radio musical director Fred Berrens, who died in 1974, Petkere moved to Los Angeles and wrote music for radio, the score for MGM’s “Ice Follies of 1939” starring Joan Crawford and James Stewart, and a shooting script for an unrealized film called “Columbia Pictures.”

Petkere, who is survived by her sister, Renee, made news again as a senior citizen when two of her apartments were successively converted to condominiums she could not afford.

Evicted the first time, she fared better in 1988 when a kindly investor told her that he would personally buy her unit, near Farmer’s Market, and allow her to remain as long as she liked.

“I hope,” she told him, “you won’t be offended if I live a long time.”