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Burton lane musicals

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Burton Lane

Overview and Commentary
Burton Lane
(This section is currently in preparation)

 

Burton Lane was born Burton Levy in 1912 in New York City. At 15 he dropped out of school to work as a song plugger (someone who works for a music publisher promoting songs from the company's catalog by playing and/or singing them for potential customers) with the idea of becoming a songwriter. George Gershwin, no less, became his friend and mentor after their mothers met and gabbed about their sons the songwriters. Lane, unlike Gershwin, left New York after trying his hand at only one Broadway production (Earl Carroll's Vanities, 1931), and soon after set out for Hollywood to take his chance on writing songs for the movies, which had only recently introduced sound and, therefore, the prospect of musicals on the screen. There he worked with a series of lyricists including Frank Loesser, Yip Harburg, Ralph Freed and others turning out tunes for a series of mostly minor pictures.

It wasn't until 1947, when he composed the score for the hit show Finian's Rainbow th

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Burton Lane  dropped out of high school at age 15 to become a song plugger and write for the 1927 edition of the revue Greenwich Village Follies.  During the early ‘30s he collaborated with lyricists Harold Adamson and Howard Dietz on several Broadway shows and wrote most of the score for the ninth edition of Earl Carroll’s Vanities. In 1933 Burton and Adamson went to Hollywood and wrote their first hit song, “Everything I Have Is Yours,” for the movie Dancing Lady. The following year Lane discovered an 11-year-old singer named Frances Gumm, brought her to MGM, and played for her audition. The studio executives signed her and gave her a new name, Judy Garland.

With Frank Loesser, Lane wrote “The Lady’s in Love with You” for the 1939 Bob Hope film Some Like It Hot. In 1941 Lane received his first Oscar nomination for “How About You,” written with Ralph Freed for the Garland/Mickey Rooney film Babes on Broadway. Lane had collaborated with “Yip” Harburg on a less than successful Broadway show in 1940, but in 1947 they teamed to score Finian’s Rainbow (later m

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Burton Lane

Burton Lane, long one of popular music’s most revered songwriters, is one of the few American composers to have proved equally adept and successful in writing for both Broadway and motion pictures. Few other songwriters have criss-crossed the nation so often and so productively between Hollywood and
New York.

His professional life began in 1927, when at age 15, he signed a contract with the Remick Music Company, a leading music publisher. Two years later, a major event for the then 17-year-old, was a chance to perform some of his tunes for George and Ira Gershwin, who offered their encouragement. Ira Gershwin also introduced Lane to E.Y. (Yip) Harburg, and years later, as luck would have it, Lane and Harburg collaborated on one of the great Broadway scores, for the hit show, “Finian’s Rainbow.”

During the ‘30s, Lane composed for four different musical revues, working with Howard Dietz on two songs for “Three’s a Crowd,” and with Harold Adamson on one song for “The Third Little Show,” two songs for “

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