Al Dubin
b. Alexander Dubin, 10 June 1891, Zurich, Switzerland, d. 11 February 1945. Brought by his parents to the USA when still a small child, Dubin grew up in Philadelphia. He wrote poetry and song lyrics while attending school, but his aspiration to become a professional songwriter was obstructed by parental hopes that he would follow in his father's footsteps as a surgeon. His education came to an abrupt halt in 1911 when he was expelled for neglecting his studies in favour of hanging out with musicians, gamblers and drunks, and he promptly headed for New York, and a career in music. A number of moderately successful songs were published in the years before World War I. During the war Dubin was gassed while serving in France, and soon afterwards he was back in New York writing songs. His work still met with only mild success until he had the idea of writing lyrics to several popular instrumentals, some of them from the classical field. The resulting songs included Humoresque (music by Anton Dvorak) and Song Of India (Rimsky-Korsakov). More orthodoxically, he wrote lyrics for The Lonesomest Gal In Town ( Jimmy McHugh and Irving Mills). By the late '20s Dubin was in Hollywood where he was teamed with Joe Burke, with such popular results as Tip Toe Through The Tulips, Painting The Clouds With Sunshine, Sally, Love Will Find A Way and Dancing With Tears In My Eyes. During the '30s, now collaborating with Harry Warren, Dubin enjoyed his most prolific and creative period, writing for films such as THE CROONER, Roman Scandals, 42nd Street, GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933, Footlight Parade, WONDER BAR, MOULIN ROUGE, TWENTY MILLION SWEETHEARTS, Dames, Go Into Your Dance, GOLD DIGGERS OF 1935, BROADWAY GONDOLIER, SHIPMATES FOREVER, PAGE MISS GLORY, SWEET MUSIC, STARS OVER BROADWAY, COLLEEN, HEARTS DIVIDED, SING ME A LOVE SONG, CAIN AND MABEL, MELODY FOR TWO, GOLD DIGGERS OF 1937, THE SINGING MARINE, MR. DODD TAKES THE AIR, and GOLD DIGGERS IN PARIS (1939). Among the many successes the duo enjoyed over a five-year period were You're Getting To Be A Habit With Me, Young And Healthy, We're In The Money, Shanghai Lil, Honeymoon Hotel, The Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, I'll String Along With You, I Only Have Eyes For You, Keep Young And Beautiful, Lulu's Back In Town’, With Plenty Of Money And You, Confidentially, Lullaby Of Broadway, which won an Oscar, and Love Is Where You Find It (co-lyricist with Johnny Mercer). Dubin's hits with other collaborators included Nobody Knows What A Red Headed Mama Can Do ( Sammy Fain and Irving Mills); Dancing With Tears In My Eyes, and For You (Joe Burke) and South American Way (Jimmy McHugh). Despite a lifestyle in which he indulged in excesses of eating, drinking, womanizing and drug-taking, Dubin wrote with enormous flair and speed. In addition to the foregoing collaborations with Warren, Dubin also wrote South American Way (with McHugh), Indian Summer ( Victor Herbert), Along The Santa Fe Trail (Will Grosz) and I Never Felt This Way Before ( Duke Ellington). By the end of the '30s, Dubin's lifestyle began to catch up with him and in the early '40s he suffered severe illness, the break-up of two marriages and a final collapse brought on by a drugs overdose. He died in February 1945.