Bert Kalmar

Bert Kalmar (born February 10, 1884 in New York , † September 18, 1947 in Los Angeles ) was an American songwriter for Broadway , film and the Great American Songbook , who worked in particular with the composer Harry Ruby .

Kalmar left school early and worked as a magician in traveling shows, a comedian and dancer in variety shows. After a knee injury, he turned to writing songs and founded the music publisher Kalmar and Puck . From 1918 he worked closely with Harry Ruby. In 1928 she wrote the music for Animal Crackers by the Marx Brothers (both on stage and for the movie) (and other Marx Brothers movies Flowering nonsense ( Horse Feathers ) in 1932, with the songs I'm Against It , I Always Get My Man and Everyone Says I Love You ) and The Marx Brothers in War ( Duck Soup 1933), where he also co-wrote the script and wrote the song Hail, Hail Fredonia , among others . In 1930 they both moved to Hollywood.

They became known through songs like Three Little Words (1930), Who's Sorry Now? (1923) and I Wanna Be Loved By You (1928), then a hit by Helen Kane (and later interpreted by Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot ), Nevertheless (I'm in Love with You) (1931) and A Kiss to Build a Dream On (1935, with Oscar Hammerstein). For A Kiss to Build a Dream On , which was used in the movie Deadly Plaster Sunset Strip , Kalmar was nominated for an Oscar in the category Best Song along with Harry Ruby and Oscar Hammerstein in 1952 . Other well-known songs are So Long, OO-Long , She's Mine, All Mine , Thinking of You , Up in the Clouds , Watching Clouds Roll By , My Sunny Tennessee , I Love You So Much , Everyone Say's I Love You and The Egg and Eye .

On Broadway he wrote libretti for show revues by the Ziegfeld Follies (with I'm a Vamp from East Broadway for the show in 1920), The Five O'Clock Girl (1927), Top Speed (1929), The Ramblers (1926), Lucky ( 1927), Helen of Troy, New York (1923), She's My Baby (1928) and High Kickers (1941). In addition to Ruby, he also worked with Oscar Hammerstein II and other songwriters.

In 1950, he and Ruby were portrayed in the film Three Little Words with Fred Astaire (as Kalmar) and Red Skelton (as Ruby).

In 1970 he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame .

Web links

• Songwriters Hall of Fame

literature

• Ken Bloom: The American Songbook - The Singers, the Songwriters, and the Songs - 100 Years of American Popular Music - The Stories of the Creators and Performers . New York City, Black Dog & Leventhal, 2005 ISBN 1-57912-448-8 )