Arthur Schwartz

born Nov. 25, 1900, Brooklyn, N.Y.
died 1984, Kintnersville, PA

Arthur Schwartz studied law, and gained his law degree, but his spare time was given over to writing popular songs. Lorenz Hart was one of those who encouraged him to give up the law for music.

In 1928 he teamed up with Howard Dietz and started contributing songs such as I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan to revues. They had a major success with the musical The Bandwagon in 1931, which introduced one of their best-known songs, Dancing in the Dark. Other hits in the 1930s were Alone Together, You and the Night and the Music, Love is a Dancing Thing. However he ran into a bad streak in terms of the commercial success of the shows for which these songs were written.

One of these disappointments was the 1939 collaboration with Dorothy Fields, Stars in Your Eyes. Schwartz concentrated his efforts on Hollywood, not only writing music, but also producing films such as Cover Girl and Night and Day.

He returned to Broadway with the revue Inside USA and in 1951 was reunited with Dorothy Fields with a more successful effort, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Fields described the experience of working with Schwartz as pure delight. The pair also wrote several songs for a now obscure film: Excuse My Dust in 1951. Several further songs were written for a film called The Big Song and Dance which was never produced, and they were back on Broadway in 1953 with By the Beautiful Sea in 1953. Schwartz's gift for melody was again displayed in the beautiful score for The Gay Life in 1961, written with his old partner, Howard Dietz.

For more information on Arthur Schwartz, see the Tunesmiths Database : Arthur Schwartz