"Run Like a Good Boy"

The first songs Sammy Fain sent to a publisher came back fast. But that didn't stop Sammy. Ever since he could remember, he had wanted to be a songwriter. The son of a cantor, he was just out of his teens and full of pep. "I felt I hadda sell my songs in person. So I went to New York personally."

For $25 a week, says Sammy, "I killed myself."

As a songwriter-plugger for Jack Mills, Inc., Sammy filled in the gaps on radio stations between soap operas. "I'd finish a spot on WMCA or WHN and want to go home for dinner and the boss would say, 'Sammy, run over to WPCH like a good boy and knock out a couple of songs.' I'd go through blizzards with a sandwich in one hand. No wonder I wound up with double pneumonia every year. Ya know," he reminisces, "George Gershwin was also a song plugger in those days. But to be perfectly honest, he didn't go through as much as I did. He couldn't sing like me."

Sammy couldn't compose like Gershwin either. But he had managed to knock out some simple little songs and two of them became hits: Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine and Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella. He migrated to show business, wrote the music for the 1939 George White's Scandals--including another hit called Are You Having Any Fun?

In 1930 Sammy crashed the movies with You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me for Maurice Chevalier. Sammy's songs turned up in 50 other movies, and last week, Sammy was just about the biggest bang in Tin Pan Alley. With his senti mental hit of the '30s, I Can Dream, Can't I? on top of the hit parade, and his bouncy new Dear Hearts and Gentle People not far behind, Sammy wasn't killing himself any more.

A nervous little man with a big face and a fast tongue, Sammy was more afraid of getting lazy and stale. Says he: "The dough is pretty good out here in Hollywood, and ya gotta be careful you don't get too fat on it." What he and Lyricist Bob (Civilization) Hiiliard would collect on Dear Hearts wasn't exactly thinning: $20,000 each.

Sammy's byword is "simplicity." "Take a great painting: it's usually simple. When it gets cluttered up it isn't so great." He likes to compose on trains: "There's something about the rhythm of train wheels. If I ever got on a real slow train to New York, I'd probably arrive with a slight symphony."

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