Millworkers

In its boldest front-page headlines the tradesheet Variety last week chronicled the dearth of Broadway musical shows, fixed the blame on the Hollywood songwriting mills' which offer big pay and security to the tunesters who got their start in Manhattan's Tin Pan Alley. When Jiibilee and At Home Abroad closed fortnight ago, only four musicomedies remained on Broadway, the mid-season low since the beginning of the War. Simultaneously. Variety's radio log showed that the tune most played on the air was I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket, one of Irving Berlin's contributions to Follow the Fleet. For his work on this cinema

RKO paid Songwriter Berlin $75,000 plus a share of the receipts.

Biggest of the big music names in Hollywood now is that of slender, raven-haired Irving Berlin, who wrote his first song 29 years ago when he was a singing waiter in a Bowery saloon. But cinema studios were turning out tunes by the gross long before the little dean of the Alley allied himself with pictures. Elaborate music departments sprang up in Hollywood in 1927 when sound films first came in. Hundreds of tunesmiths bummed their way West, found jobs overnight, collected huge salaries. After the first flood of musical films, deflation came fast, and there was a rush back to Broadway. Not until 1933 did Hollywood again become the songwriters' paradise. Reason then was Warner Brothers' Forty-Second Street which started a new vogue for musical films.

The musical setup in Hollywood is saner now than New Yorkers might gather from the stage parody in Boy Meets Girl, in which a prankster buzzes for a composer, demands and gets a roundelay in 15 minutes. Composers and lyricists now attend conferences with producers and directors, receive specific assignments that take into consideration the personalities of the performers. One constant reminder is that a song must be catchy enough to impress on first hearing, as did Cheek to Cheek in Top Hat, Alone in One Night at the Opera.

The present crop of Hollywood songwriters was chosen with more discretion than when the first gold rushers went West. Each studio has proven experts on its staff, men who really earn salaries running as high as $1,500 per week. RKO not only lured Berlin away from Broadway but it also has a special contract with Jerome Kern (Roberta, I Dream Too Much), pays so well for his curving melodies that he has already recovered the fortune he lost in Depression. Despite their rich earnings, Berlin and Kern have remained unaffected by Hollywood's glitter. Kern still refuses to buy a new hat, begs old ones from friends. Berlin declines to be separated from the heavy old upright piano at which he wrote Alexander's Ragtime Band 25 years ago.

From the Alley to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer went Nacio Herb Brown and his teammate, dandified Arthur Freed, who has been known to order 25 suits at a time. As a youth, Composer Brown sang in a Los Angeles church choir, worked week days as a tailor's apprentice. When success first came to him in Hollywood he bought a lavish estate at Malibu Beach, four big automobiles. Brown's big song hits have been Singing in the Rain, Wedding of the Painted Dolls, Pagan Love Song, Broadway Melody, All I Do Is Dream of You, You Are My Lucky Star.

Columbia's Victor Shertzinger writes songs (his bestseller: Marcheta) and directs Grace Moore's pictures. He began his musical career as a boy violinist, toured with Nordica, Sembrich, Calve. As a director he made 21 of the old Charles Ray comedies. But composing was more to his liking. He does most of his work on his pipe organ at home, tries his tunes out on his daughter Paula, II.

Ralph Rainger (Paramount) is one of the few popular songwriters who has had thorough classical training. He studied at Manhattan's Institute of Musical Art. To earn a living, he took a job as a pianist in the First Little Show (1929), wrote Moanin' Low for Libby Holman. For Paramount Rainger and his lyricist Leo Robin wrote June in January, Love in Bloom and the songs Gladys Swarthout sang in Rose of the Rancho. When Paramount wants swing music, Mack Gordon and Harry Revel are set to work. Clowning at parties pleases them more. With little urging Gordon will hoist his 317 Ib. up onto a piano, coyly croon I Feel Like a Feather in the Breeze, the hit from Collegiate, for which Gordon and Revel wrote the score.

Twentieth Century-Fox boasts that its Lew Pollack (Charmaine, Two Cigarets in the Dark) can produce a song on any subject if he is given an hour's notice. But Warners' boast is bigger. Musical cinemas seemed doomed until Harry Warren and Al Dubin turned out the tunes for Forty-Second Street, went on to do Footlight Parade, Gold Diggers of 1933, Wonder Bar, Twenty Million Sweethearts. Fortnight ago their Lullaby of Broadway (Gold Diggers of 1935) was voted the best song of the year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (TIME, March 16).

A cinema dealing with songwriters might well take Warren & Dubin for two type characters. Composer Warren is nearsighted and thin, suffers from nervous indigestion, a relic of the days of silent pictures when he played the piano in the old Vitagraph studios, attempted to provide an atmosphere that would inspire the actors.

Dubin is heavy, careless, good-natured, writes a lyric on any old scrap of paper. He cheerfully recalls the days when he peddled his verses for $10 to $15 apiece, finally gained recognition with Just a Girl That Men Forget (1923). Hollywood salaries have tempted many of its songwriters to become "country gentlemen," raise blooded roosters, olive trees, avocados. Dubin recently bought an elaborate estate in San Fernando Valley where he still chews tobacco, sucks his corncob pipe.

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