Sammy Cahn
Samuel Cohen
BORN: June 18, 1913, New York, NY
DIED: January 15, 1993, Los Angeles, CA
One of the more diverse American lyricists of the 20th century, Sammy Cahn
wrote his first hit by the age of 21 and followed it with over five decades
of successful and award-winning compositions. Working most frequently with
Jule Styne during the 1940s and Jimmy Van Heusen during the 1950s (though
he also composed with Axel Stordahl and Paul Weston), Cahn had a way with
lovesick ballads ("I'll Walk Alone," "Only the Lonely") as well as bouncy
uptempo songs ("Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!," "Saturday Night
Is the Loneliest Night of the Week").
Born on New York's Lower East Side in June 1913, Samuel Cohen was the son
of Jewish immigrants from Poland. His mother encouraged him to take up the
violin, which Cahn used to join a small orchestra which played at bar mitzvahs
and other Jewish gatherings. At the age of 16, he began writing songs and
later convinced orchestra-mate Saul Chaplin to join him in a partnership.
The duo wrote for bands as well as vaudeville, gaining their first hit in
1935 when Jimmie Lunceford's Orchestra recorded "Rhythm Is Our Business."
During the next two years, the Cahn and Chaplin team wrote three more big
hits, including "Until the Real Thing Comes Along" (sung by Andy Kirk); the
Yiddish novelty "Beir Mir Bist Du Schöen" (which became the Andrews
Sisters' first million-selling hit); and "Please Be Kind" (popularized by
Benny Goodman and Bob Crosby).
When Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin's writing contract with Warner Bros. expired
in the early '40s, they decided to split up. Cahn soon found another partner,
Jule Styne, the man with whom he wrote his most celebrated hits. Writing
film and album songs for Frank Sinatra -- who had gotten to know Cahn during
his tenure in the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra -- during the mid-'40s, Cahn and
Styne were one of the most successful teams in the business, as a variety
of stars gained the upper reaches of the Hit Parade with "Saturday Night
(Is the Loneliest Night of the Week)" (Sinatra, Sammy Kaye, Frankie Carle),
"I've Heard That Song Before" (Harry James), "I'll Walk Alone" (Doris Day),
"It's Been a Long, Long Time" (Bing Crosby, Harry James, Charlie Spivak),
"Things We Did Last Summer" (Sinatra), "Five Minutes More" (Sinatra, Tex
Beneke, the Three Suns, Bob Crosby) and "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It
Snow!" (Vaughn Monroe, Woody Herman, Connee Boswell, Bob Crosby). As well,
Cahn and Styne wrote scores for several movies plus the 1947 Broadway musical
High Button Shoes.
Though successful, High Button Shoes was Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne's last
collaboration for almost a decade. While Styne stayed in New York, Cahn journeyed
to Hollywood, recruiting Nicholas Brodszky as his new partner and writing
half a dozen film songs for Mario Lanza plus "I'll Never Stop Loving You"
for Doris Day. Cahn and Styne began working together again in 1954, and though
they were together for only a year, the pair won an Oscar for Sinatra's rendition
of the title song from Three Coins in the Fountain as well as writing music
for Marilyn Monroe's The Seven Year Itch.
His relationship with Styne was somewhat soured by the mid-'50s, so Sammy
Cahn turned to another old friend, Frank Sinatra, to rejuvenate his career.
With Jimmy Van Heusen as his songwriting partner, Cahn charted a course for
Sinatra with several hits from movies, like "The Tender Trap and two more
Oscar winners for Best Song from a Film, "All the Way" and "High Hopes."
There were many other Sinatra favorites during the late '50s to early '60s,
many used as the title songs to his albums: "Come Fly with Me," "Come Dance
with Me," "Only the Lonely," "No One Cares" and "September of My Years."
By no means restricted to status as Sinatra's muses, Cahn and Van Heusen
also collaborated on Cahn's fourth Oscar award-winning song, "Call Me Irresponsible,"
plus the score for a TV adaptation of Thornton Wilder's Our Town (whence
came another perennial favorite, Love and Marriage") and scores for two Broadway
musicals, Skyscraper and Walking Happy.
By the end of the '60s, with enormous success connected to his name, Sammy
Cahn returned to work with old partner Styne on a musical score named Look
to the Lilies. Cahn entered the 1970s with a new direction: performance.
He wrote and starred in a one-man show named Words and Music, which gained
him an award not devoid of irony -- Best New Talent on Broadway from the
Outer Circle Critics. A year later, he brought the show to England, and remounted
the entire spectacle in the 1980s as well. Inducted into the Songwriters
Hall of Fame, Sammy Cahn died in Los Angeles on January 15, 1993. ~ John
Bush, All Music Guide
American composer Sammy Cahn was one of the last of the "tin pan alley" school
of tunesmiths. After five years of churning out specialty numbers and nightclub
material, Cahn wrote his first film score for the 1940 Andrews Sisters/Ritz
Brothers vehicle Argentine Nights. Inasmuch as the songs in this picture
contained such lyrics as "Amigo we go riding tonight," Cahn had nowhere to
go but up. His first big hit, "I've Heard That Song Before," was featured
in the B-plus musical Youth on Parade (1942). In 1947's It Happened in Brooklyn,
Cahn wrote for Frank Sinatra for the first time. It was a professional "marriage"
which would result in one top-ten success after another for Sinatra over
the next three decades: "Time After Time," "All the Way," "High Hopes," "The
Second Time Around," "Call Me Irresponsible," "My Kind of Town" and many
more. While several of these songs were not written with Sinatra in mind
("Call Me Irresponsible" was sung by Jackie Gleason in Papa's Delicate Condition
[1963]), it was Ol' Blue Eyes' interpretations that made them famous. Working
most often in collaboration with Jule Styne and Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn
wrote for both Hollywood and Broadway during his long career: his best remembered
theatrical show was Mary Martin's Peter Pan (1953) ("I Gotta Crow," "I'm
Flying," etc.). Nominated 30 times for the Academy Award, Cahn took home
the gold-plated statuette on four occasions. In his last two decades, Sammy
Cahn showed up frequently on TV and in live concerts; an ingratiating ham,
Cahn could go on all night and into the next day with his "And then I wrote..."
routine. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide