Harry Warren

Harry Warren — a name familiar to music aficionados, though many would be hard pressed to know exactly what he was famous for. Mention some titles of the countless songs he composed during his amazing career, however, and recognition and remembrance are awakened. "Lullaby of Broadway," "I Only Have Eyes for You," "42nd Street," "At Last," "We're in the Money," "Jeepers, Creepers," "The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe," "That's Amore," and the theme from the Wyatt Earp television program are just a handful of Warren's enduring classics.

A brilliant creator of songs for film and a three-time Academy Award recipient, Warren (1893-1981) collaborated with many of America's finest lyricists, including Johnny Mercer, Harold Adamson, Dorothy Fields, Ralph Blane, Leo Robin, Mack Gordon and Al Dubin. And anybody who was somebody in film musicals sang and danced to Warren songs on the silver screen — Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Al Jolson, Judy Garland, Dick Powell, Carmen Miranda, Dean Martin, Lena Horne, James Cagney, Gene Kelly and Betty Grable, among many, many others. Indeed, Warren's creations have survived and adapted well to the rock & roll era, providing hits for artists as diverse as the Flamingos, Art Garfunkel, Bobby Darin, Chris Montez and Dinah Washington. Though Warren didn't live to see it, 42nd Street, a musical based on his songs for the art-deco film extravaganzas of Busby Berkeley, has been a long-running Broadway hit, not once, but twice, and continues to pack in audiences.

Brooklyn-born Salvatore Guaragna (Warren's real name), the eleventh child of an immigrant Italian bootmaker, truly lived the American dream.

Playback recently spoke about the continuing interest in Warren music with Julia Riva, the granddaughter of Harry Warren, and (with her sister, Jophe Jones-Gaddishead) owner of the publishing firm, Four Jays Music, founded by Warren in 1955.

Playback: What are some of the exciting new things happening with your grandfather's songs?

Riva: Well, 42nd Street opened in Los Angeles last year and did really well; Celine Dion incorporated "At Last" into her Las Vegas act; "I Only Have Eyes for You" was used in a Mercedes ad campaign. Harry seems to be showing up everywhere. He'd have loved it.

Harry Warren songs seem to add a timeless elegance to the products they advertise. I remember hearing a great Al Jolson recording of "A Quarter to Nine" in a perfume commercial some years ago.

There are so many wonderful songs. When I took over the publishing company, I didn't realize he had been writing songs in the Twenties (before going to Hollywood) and there were all these amazing songs like "One Sweet Letter from You." Thank God for people like Woody Allen who put "Nagasaki" into Bullets over Broadway. It was fabulous. Really, all Harry Warren's songs from the sublime to the ridiculous — there wasn't anything he couldn't write a song about. It's not easy to identify a Harry Warren song because he didn't really have a style. You can recognize songs by Cole Porter or Gershwin but because Harry Warren was such a genius at writing for the situation, only a real musicologist could identify them as his. He's almost like a fabulous purse — he can go anywhere.

One of the best-known things about him is that he is not well known.

Exactly – that's his claim to fame.

It must have been frustrating for him but I guess he preferred it that way.

Yes — I can't say that he didn't have a hand in that. At one time, he had a publicist but he became infuriated reading about himself in the newspaper. I think he was an old-fashioned guy, someone who wanted to be acknowledged, but I don't think he was into celebrity.

Harry Warren obviously had a very rewarding career financially and artistically, but would it be correct to say he was always frustrated that he didn't get to have a successful Broadway show in his lifetime?

Julia: Yes, although it was his choice to leave New York and come to California and do movies because he thought the money was better. He didn't think he could make as much money on Broadway. But he complained his whole life that he was living in what he referred to as an "Indian Outpost." When he first arrived in California, they drove him out to Burbank and he was surrounded by bean fields. Here was a guy that was a real New Yorker and there were no delicatessens here — I know that he and (lyricist) Al Dubin used to go to San Francisco to eat.

He worked with the many different lyricists duing his long career and his most significant partners were Al Dubin and Mack Gordon.

Right, but he also wrote with Leo Robin, Ralph Blane and Johnny Mercer. He and Johnny were good friends but they were always fighting with each other. He also collaborated with Dorothy Fields and Ted Koehler. And I had better not forget Jack Brooks, with whom he wrote "That's Amore," an amazing song that appears in The Caddy. He didn't get to do too many numbers that reflected his Italian heritage — "That's Amore" and "Innamoratta" (from Artists and Models) are the major ones. I think there's one from the Twenties called "So This is Venice," and another titled, "Past'a Cheech." But all of his songs reflected Italian heritage because he was a Puccini nut and always listening to opera. If you really listen to his songs you can hear that influence in his melodies. Some singers would complain that his songs are hard to sing.

Well, he got so many incredible covers of his songs anyway.

I'm in the process of putting together a collection of Nat "King" Cole singing Harry Warren. Nat loved his songs and recorded many of them and I am going to have enough to do a whole album.

I imagine that you can probably do a couple albums of rock & roll era interpretations.

Absolutely. One I really love is "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" sung by Marianne Faithfull. Siouxsie and the Banshees have done "Jeepers Creepers," and Annie Lennox has recorded "Keep Young and Beautiful."

Harry Warren songs have incredible adaptability and survivability.

They do. The amazing thing is, of course, that because he wrote for film, it's not just the songs, but what you associate them with — almost like music videos really.

That's especially true of the Busby Berkeley films he worked on. They are such artifacts of their time but still so overpowering to look at, like "Shanghai Lil" from Footlight Parade or "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" from 42nd Street.

I particularly love the production number "Shanghai Lil." These incredible and fabulous songs are timeless. They are just as great today and just as funny today.

Do you have a particular favorite among Harry Warren songs?

"At Last" was always my favorite — I'd sing it at weddings. Another is "You Let Me Down," a great blues song (from Stars Over Broadway). It's hard to choose.

What's in the future for the Harry Warren catalog?

In terms of the future, I'm just busy promoting the songs in whatever way I can. They're an important part of musical history. When the curtain goes up on 42nd Street, and the audience goes crazy, I always start to cry. Here was this man with whom I spent my childhood and part of my adult life, and to see that his music is still so appreciated is a thrill.

— Jim Steinblatt


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