Jule Styne

Jule Styne
Background information
Birth name Julius Kerwin Stein
Born (1905-12-31)December 31, 1905
London, England, UK
Died September 20, 1994(1994-09-20) (aged 88)
Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Occupation(s) Songwriter
Years active 1947–1994

Jule Styne (/ˈdʒuːli staɪn/;[1] December 31, 1905 – September 20, 1994) was a British-American songwriter especially famous for a series of Broadway musicals, which include several very well known and frequently revived shows.

Among his most enduring songs is "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!", co-written with Sammy Cahn in 1945.[2]

Early life

Styne was born in London as Julius Kerwin Stein to Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine, Russian Empire who ran a small grocery. At the age of eight he moved with his family to Chicago, where at an early age he began taking piano lessons. He proved to be a prodigy and performed with the Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit Symphonies before he was ten years old.

Career

Styne attended Chicago Musical College, but before then he had already attracted attention of another teenager, Mike Todd, later a successful film producer, who commissioned him to write a song for a musical act that he was creating. It was the first of over 1,500 published songs Styne composed in his career. In 1929, Styne was playing with the Ben Pollack band, and wrote the song Sunday.[3]

Styne was a vocal coach for 20th Century Fox, until Darryl F. Zanuck fired him because vocal coaching was "a luxury, and we're cutting out those luxuries" and told him he should write songs, because "that's forever". Styne established his own dance band, which brought him to the notice of Hollywood, where he was championed by Frank Sinatra and where he began a collaboration with lyricist Sammy Cahn, with whom he wrote many songs for the movies, including "It's Been a Long, Long Time" (#1 for 3 weeks for Harry James and His Orchestra in 1945), "Five Minutes More," and the Oscar-winning title song of Three Coins in the Fountain. He collaborated on the score for the 1955 musical film My Sister Eileen with Leo Robin. Ten of his songs were nominated for the Oscar, many written with Cahn, including "I've Heard That Song Before" (#1 for 13 weeks for Harry James and His Orchestra in 1943), "I'll Walk Alone", "It's Magic" (a #2 hit for Doris Day in 1948) and "I Fall in Love Too Easily".

In 1947, Styne wrote his first score for a Broadway musical, High Button Shoes with Cahn, and over the next several decades wrote the scores for many Broadway shows, most notably Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Peter Pan (additional music), Bells Are Ringing, Gypsy, Do Re Mi, Funny Girl, Sugar (with a story based on the movie Some Like It Hot, but all new music), and the Tony-winning Hallelujah, Baby!.

Styne wrote original music for the short-lived, themed amusement park Freedomland U.S.A. which opened on June 19, 1960.

His collaborators included Sammy Cahn, Leo Robin, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Stephen Sondheim, and Bob Merrill.

He was the subject of This Is Your Life for British television in 1978 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in New York’s Time Square.

Styne died of heart failure in New York City at the age of 88.[2]

Awards

Styne was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972[4] and the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981,[5] and he was a recipient of a Drama Desk Special Award and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1990.

Songs

A selection of the many songs that Styne wrote:

Credits

References

  1. 1 2 Gilliland, John (1994). Pop Chronicles the 40s: The Lively Story of Pop Music in the 40s (audiobook). ISBN 978-1-55935-147-8. OCLC 31611854. Tape 3, side A.
  2. 1 2 Blau, Eleanor (21 September 1994). "Jule Styne, Bountiful Creator Of Song Favorites, Dies at 88". The New York Times.
  3. ↑ "Songwriters Jule Styne, Martin Charnin, Charles Strouse, Walter Bishop, Sr." on YouTube
  4. ↑ Jule Styne at the Songwriters Hall of Fame
  5. ↑ "26 Elected to the Theater Hall of Fame; 26 From Broadway Voted Into Theater Hall of Fame". The New York Times. 3 March 1981.
  6. ↑ Gilliland 1994, tape 1, side A.
  7. ↑ "Some Like It Hot: The Musical". Retrieved 30 October 2015.
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